First Spanish rule
Juan Ponce de León
Timucua Indians at a column erected by the French in 1562
1527 map by Vesconte Maggiolo showing the east coast of North America with “Tera Florida” at the top and “Lavoradore” at the bottom.
1591 map of Florida by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues
Juan Ponce de Leon discovered Florida. A legend, unlikely to be true, says he discovered it while searching for the Fountain of Youth. Although it is often stated that he sighted the peninsula for the first time on March 27, 1513, and thought it was an island, he probably saw one of the Bahama islands.[8] It is Spanish custom to name a place after the nearest Roman Catholic feast.[citation needed] He arrived on the east coast during the Spanish Easter feast, Pascua Florida, April 7. He named the land La Pascua de la Florida, or “Passion of the Flowers,” or “Passion of the Christ”
Ponce de León returned with equipment and settlers to start a colony in 1521, but they were driven off by repeated attacks from the native population. Pánfilo de Narváez’s expedition explored Florida’s west coast in 1528 but was lost at sea upon his attempted seaward escape to Mexico. Hernando de Soto’s entered Florida in 1539. In 1559 Tristán de Luna y Arellano established a brief settlement in Pensacola but after a violent hurricane destroyed the area it was abandoned in 1561.[9]
René Goulaine de Laudonnière founded Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville in 1564 as a haven for the Huguenots.[10] Further down the coast the Spanish founded in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, San Agustín (St. Augustine)[11] is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in any U.S. state; it is second oldest only to San Juan, Puerto Rico in the United States’ current territory. From this base of operations, the Spanish began building Catholic missions.
On September 20, 1565, Menéndez de Avilés attacked Fort Caroline, killing most of the French Huguenot soldiers defending it.[12] Two years later, Dominique de Gourgues recaptured the settlement from the Spanish and slaughtered all of the Spanish defenders.
St. Augustine became the most important settlement in Florida. It was little more than a fortress for many years, and was frequently attacked and burned, with most residents killed or fled. It was notably devastated in 1586, when English sea captain and sometime pirate Sir Francis Drake plundered and burned the city. Catholic missionaries used St. Augustine as a base of operations to establish far-flung missions. They converted 26,000 natives by 1655, but a revolt in 1656 and an epidemic in 1659 proved devastating. Pirate attacks were unrelenting against small outposts and even St. Augustine itself.
Throughout the 17th century, English settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas gradually pushed the boundaries of Spanish territory south, while the French settlements along the Mississippi River encroached on the western borders of the Spanish claim. In 1702, English Colonel James Moore and allied Yamasee and Creek Indians attacked and razed the town of St. Augustine, but they could not gain control of the fort. In 1704, Moore and his soldiers began burning Spanish missions in north Florida and executing Indians friendly with the Spanish. The collapse of the Spanish mission system and the defeat of the Spanish-allied Apalachee Indians (the Apalachee massacre) opened Florida up to slave raids, which reached to the Florida Keys and decimated the native population. The Yamasee War of 1715–1717 resulted in numerous Indian refugees, such as the Yamasee, moving south to Florida. In 1719, the French captured the Spanish settlement at Pensacola.[13]
The British and their colonies made war repeatedly against the Spanish, especially in 1702, and captured St Augustine in 1740. The British were angry that Spanish Florida was attracting a large number of Africans and African Americans in North America who sought freedom from British slavery. The slaves that could escape, once they made it to Florida, were given freedom after they converted to Catholicism. They settled in a buffer community north of St. Augustine, called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first settlement made of free slaves in North America.
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake triggered a tsunami that would have struck Central Florida with an estimated 1.5-meter (4 ft 11 in) wave.[14]
Creek and Seminole Native Americans who had established buffer settlements in Florida at the invitation of the Spanish government also welcomed many of those slaves. In 1771, Governor John Moultrie wrote to the English Board of Trade that “It has been a practice for a good while past, for negroes to run away from their Masters, and get into the Indian towns, from whence it proved very difficult to get them back.” When British government officials pressured the Seminoles to return runaway slaves, they replied that they had “merely given hungry people food, and invited the slaveholders to catch the runaways themselves.”[15]
British rule
The expanded West Florida territory in 1767.
In 1763, Spain traded Florida to the Kingdom of Great Britain for control of Havana, Cuba, which had been captured by the British during the Seven Years’ War. It was part of a large expansion of British territory following the country’s victory in the Seven Years War. Almost the entire Spanish population left, taking along most of the remaining indigenous population to Cuba. The British divided the territory into East Florida and West Florida. They began aggressive recruitment programs designed to attract settlers to the area, offering free land and backing for export-oriented businesses.
East Florida was the site of the largest single importation of white settlers in the colonial period; Dr Andrew Turnbull transplanted around 1,500 indentured settlers, from Minorca, Majorca, Ibiza, Smyrna, Crete, Mani Peninsula, and Sicily, to grow hemp, sugarcane, indigo, and to produce rum. Settled at New Smyrna, within months the colony suffered major losses primarily due to insect-borne diseases and Native American raids. Most crops did not do well in the sandy Florida soil. Those that survived rarely equaled the quality produced in other colonies. The colonists tired of their servitude and Turnbull’s rule. On several occasions, he used African slaves to whip his unruly settlers. The settlement collapsed and the survivors fled to safety with the British authorities in St. Augustine. Their descendants survive to this day, as does the name New Smyrna.
In 1767, the British moved the northern boundary of West Florida to a line extending from the mouth of the Yazoo River east to the Chattahoochee River (32° 28′north latitude), consisting of approximately the lower third of the present states of Mississippi and Alabama. During this time, Creek Indians migrated into Florida and formed the Seminole tribe.
The two Floridas remained loyal to Great Britain throughout the American Revolutionary War. However, Spain (participating indirectly in the war as an ally of France) captured Pensacola from the British in 1781. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War and returned all of Florida to Spanish control, but without specifying the boundaries. The Spanish wanted the expanded boundary, while the new United States demanded the old boundary at the 31st parallel north. In the Treaty of San Lorenzo of 1795, Spain recognized the 31st parallel as the boundary.
Second Spanish rule
Spanish presence was minor during that empire’s second rule over Florida. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against the U.S., and the U.S. demanded Spain reform. There were almost no Spanish settlers and only a few soldiers. In the meantime, American settlers established a foothold in the area and ignored Spanish officials. British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of West Florida on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the Spanish garrison at Baton Rouge (now in Louisiana), and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “Bonnie Blue Flag”.
In 1810, parts of West Florida were annexed by proclamation of President James Madison, who claimed the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase. These parts were incorporated into the newly formed Territory of Orleans. The U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida to the Mississippi Territory in 1812. Spain continued to dispute the area, though the United States gradually increased the area it occupied.
Seminole Indians based in East Florida began raiding Georgia settlements, and offering havens for runaway slaves. The United States Army led increasingly frequent incursions into Spanish territory, including the 1817–1818 campaign against the Seminole Indians by Andrew Jackson that became known as the First Seminole War. The United States now effectively controlled East Florida. Control was necessary according to Secretary of State John Quincy Adams because Florida had become “a derelict open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them.”.[16] Florida had become a burden to Spain, which could not afford to send settlers or garrisons. Madrid therefore decided to cede the territory to the United States through the Adams-Onís Treaty, which took effect in 1821.[17]