Spanish Florida: The British Are Coming (1668-1718)

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Welcome to the show. In the last days of 1668, Spanish Florida and its only real settlement of St. Augustine were picking up the pieces of the devastating attack on the city by the pirate Robert Searles, who killed many, stole all the movable wealth of the city, and took many captive. He ransomed the people he considered white back to the people of St. Augustine taking refuge in a nearby fort. But then Searles takes all his captives he considered to be something other than white and left with them intending to sell them into slavery.

[00:00:30]Before he left, he took soundings of the harbor, clearly intending to return and ravage the city again if the opportunity were to ever arise. Before the attack, the European population of St. Augustine numbered 600 people at most with just a couple dozen Franciscan friars scattered throughout the native villages of Spanish Florida. Now they were left with next to nothing to rebuild the world that they knew, which had not been a kind one and hadn't been for a very long time.

[00:00:59]Going back a bit, Spanish Florida, after the many failed attempts to settle, finally took root in 1565 after the founder of Spanish Florida, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, led the brutal massacre of the Huguenots in what was once the colony of French Florida. And from these ashes, Menéndez created Spanish Florida as a defensive outpost intending to protect the Caribbean and the Spanish silver fleet from pirates and to keep the East Coast of North America free from foreign occupation.

[00:01:27]After initial expansion of Spanish outposts stretching from the Miami area today to modern-day Tennessee, the various Native American groups whittled the Spanish back to just the one settlement of St. Augustine. And from here on out, expansion was accomplished through the converting of native chiefs to Catholicism and offering them gifts and protection. The age of the conquistador was over, and so was nearly the age of Spanish Florida as the king of Spain ordered the colony evacuated until word came in of an English settlement called Jamestown hidden somewhere north of St. Augustine and Spanish Florida was reborn in 1607, 1608, 1609. But in the 60 years since that time and leading into this episode, Spanish Florida utterly failed in its directive to prevent settlement by other Europeans. By the serials attack of 1668, the French were in the far north, the Dutch and Swedish colonies had come and gone and the English had devoured the coastline from Virginia up to the St. Lawrence. And even though arriving a generation after the Spanish, they now numbered somewhere north of 100,000 individuals. All of this land previously was considered part of Spanish Florida, at least on the Spanish maps. It was an indefensible claim, but none of these big picture scenes really mattered now to the Spanish in Florida. They had to rebuild, but their leadership immediately fell on one another with blame. Governor Vega blamed the locally born Creole Floridanos leaders, especially Sergeant Major Nicolas Ponce de Leon II, a distant relative of the explorer Juan Ponce de Leon. The Sergeant Major didn't lead a defense of the city, but he did organize a hasty retreat from the city bringing civilians to the safety of the fort while the pirates massacred many in the streets including the Sergeant Major's own daughter. Now for Governor Vega, he did nothing. He merely fled to the fort to protect himself. The parish priest of St. Augustine placed the blame on the governor. The attack being divine punishment for the governor's lecherous ways, supposedly. The people were heartbroken, angry, [music] and they were also hungry as they had traded away most of their remaining food to the pirates in return for the captives, of course. The governor sent a ship to the Apalachee province on the Florida panhandle where the native Apalachee people lived and were subject to the Spanish in order to secure a supply of corn. That ship, of course, ran aground.

[00:03:53]The governor also sent a ship to Cuba in order to obtain help. Cuba had long been settled by the Spanish and often served as a big brother to Spanish Florida, sometimes in abusive and exploitative ways. But, they were nonetheless the nearest help to be found. Now, all the sails in St. Augustine were taken by the pirates, and the Floridanos had to stitch together a few makeshift sails from various linens. The pirate attack occurred in May, but the governor of Cuba only learned about the attack in September of 1688.

[00:04:23]>> [music] >> And now, the long-ignored Floridanos were due for a bit of support. St. Augustine, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, had an economy resembling that of a modern-day military town, where the money flowed in for the local base, and that kept the town alive. St. Augustine depended on a yearly package of subsidies called a situado, paid out of the coffers of New Spain to keep Spanish Florida afloat. It provided funds for the Franciscan missionaries, it paid for the local garrison, the upkeep of public works and fortifications, and paid around 50% of the salaries for each government and treasury official in the colony. All in all, it would appear that almost half of the men in Spanish Florida received some part of their income directly from the situado, and then that money flowed out as the currency for the rest of the population.

[00:05:09]Now, for years prior to 1688, the situado just simply had not arrived, and that had been a long-standing problem.

[00:05:17]By that year, Florida was owed more than 400,000 pesos in missed payments. After the attack, a situado was organized and paid out to the Floridanos for 110,000 pesos, much needed, but still sorely lacking. Now, as bad as the attack was, the plight of the Floridanos really didn't bend the ear of the Queen Regent Mariana of Spain until 1670, when the war between Spain and England ended with the Treaty of Madrid, which promised that each power would honor the territorial integrity of the other, and all lands settled by that power before the signing of the treaty. Unfortunately for the Spanish, this included the settlement of Charlestown. Yes, pronounced Charlestown at the time, as it was the southernmost settlement of the province of Carolina. A settlement the Spanish in Florida only learned about in late May to early June of 1670.

[00:06:06]Word of the settlement had not reached Spain by the time of the signing of the treaty in July, and the Floridanos attempted attack on Charlestown was thwarted by a storm. Thus, now the Spanish had to concede that Spanish Florida only ran as far north as the southern limit of Charleston, South Carolina today. After this, the situato arrives with some regularity as the English were very, very close. Governor Vegas' term ends, and the new governor, Manuel de Sendoya, arrives. Spanish authorities made it a practice to only appoint governors who were peninsulars, and who had never had any contact with the local Floridanos. They didn't want them to have any loyalties that would lie locally and not with the crown. The new governor, Sendoya, then uses the native Wallay people of Santa Catalina Island to spy on the people of Charlestown. Having missed their window and now at peace with England, the Floridanos can only watch from afar, unless the English ventured further south. Sendoya also builds up the defenses of Santa Catalina, as this was now the northernmost outpost of Spanish Florida. This was just the beginning of a plan the governor had developed to rebuild Spanish Florida into a more defensible colony. The crown jewel of which would be a new stone fort outside of St. Augustine, replacing the existing fort that would be large enough to shelter the entire population of St. Augustine if needed. Before Governor Sendoya even arrived in Florida, he took his plans to New Spain to show the Viceroy, who pledged 12,000 pesos up front and 10,000 pesos every year thereafter to support its construction, in addition to funds given to him by the queen. The name of this great fortress would be the Castillo de San Marcos.

[00:07:48]And the governor broke ground on this project October 2nd, 1672.

[00:07:53]The stone used would be coquina stone from the local Anastasia Island, which originally is quite soft, but hardens when exposed to air. Cut by the colony's own crown slaves, enslaved Africans owned by the government and used for public work projects. The stones were also cut by laborers sent from Native American tribes who paid tribute to the Spanish in a form of donated labor, a system referred to as the repartimiento system, which tended to be far less invasive than the encomienda system found in other parts of the Spanish New World. The native groups in return expected yearly gifts from the governor, which were given directly to their chiefs. These chiefs then determined how the gifts would be distributed throughout their domain. And the chiefs also determined who would go serve the labor tribute in St. Augustine. In this way, the repartimiento system reinforced the authority of the participating chiefs among their people. And the Spanish, of course, offered their protection in case of an internal rebellion or an outside attack. This interplay between the governor of Spanish Florida and the subjected Native American tribes resembled a pre-existing native system of paramount chiefs who would serve over many subservient chiefs, but essentially leave each group alone to govern themselves except in times of crisis. The Spanish mimicked this system with the addition of requiring tribes to take on, for instance, Franciscan missionaries. The missionaries in return always keep soldiers and other worldly Spaniards out and away from their converts. And in this time, the Franciscans became quite influential, serving as the only link between the natives and St. Augustine.

[00:09:23]And while Spanish Florida had very few actual Spaniards, the subjected groups of the Wale, the Timucua, and the Apalachee around 1670 numbered somewhere north of 10,000 people. And many in these groups had absorbed Spanish clothing, fashion sensibilities, the Catholic religion, Spanish vocabulary, and even their native pottery began taking on Spanish designs. In other words, there was a collection of unique native Latino cultures running from the top east side of the Florida peninsula and north into Georgia, today extending straight westward into the panhandle.

[00:09:58]Spanish Florida also had a small population of free Africans. In 1672, a white indentured servant named Brian Fitzpatrick ran away from Charlestown and sought refuge in St. Augustine. And from here forward, the Spanish developed a policy of giving freedom to any runaways from the English colonies as a way to weaken their enemy. In time, enslaved Africans would also take the same journey south as Brian, and although the Spanish had slaves of their own, these new arrivals would join the free African community. And the founding of Charlestown, like Jamestown before it, actually caused a boom time for St. Augustine. The crown provided funds to hire larger amounts of soldiers for the garrison, and the building of the ambitious Castillo brought in more jobs than any other project in the history of Spanish Florida. Not to mention a high number of paid specialists who could spread their salary around the St. Augustine marketplace. But in 1674, 2 years into the construction, Governor Sendoya and the chief engineer he hired oversee the construction both die within days of each other, just the first of many setbacks to come. The new Governor Salazar doesn't arrive until May of 1675. While this is happening in the same year of 1674, the Franciscans once again try to set up a mission among the Choctaw and are quickly ejected from Choctaw territory. The same thing will happen among the Apalachicola in 1677.

[00:11:19]In 1675, a small incident in Chicato country against the Franciscans was mediated by the friars and the Spanish considered the matter settled. But the Chicato were so afraid of Spanish retribution, they moved westward and out of Spanish domain. One of Governor Salazar's first issues was dealing with the reoccurring problem of the Franciscans inability to befriend new native groups. Combined with this was the massive die-off of the Catholic native population from periodic waves of old world diseases coming from contact with the Spanish. The Timucua, for instance, numbered perhaps 100,000.

[00:11:55]Now here in 1675, the Franciscans can only account for less than 1,400 Timucuan individuals. Most of their current converts actually came from their more recently converted groups, especially the Apalachee people. They too had a bleak future ahead. The die-off was also so severe that large parts of Central Florida were now depopulated. Governor Salazar and future governors will try to entice new natives to settle the region with massive land grants and free gifts of seed corn, but this will take years to come to fruition. In the meantime, the emptied land hosted a series of massive cattle ranches running all the way from St. Augustine into Apalachee, worked by some of the first cowboys in what would now be the United States, many of which were Catholic natives. A map made in July of 1675 shows that the Castillo only had three walls anywhere near finished with a long way to go, and public funds were being reallocated towards rebuilding the roads connecting St. Augustine to the 35 different missions it operated at the time, especially the road heading west to the Spanish fort in Apalachee. This became more pressing in June of 1677 when pirates attacked the area outside of the Apalachee fort, taking two ships and three Franciscans hostage. The commander of the fort negotiated for their release for 30 pigs, and the pirates left. But this incident was a sobering reminder that the two sides of Florida were not easily accessible to one another. This was a long-standing problem that affected the marketplace of St. Augustine. The ranches and the farms on the extreme western end of Florida often found it easier, faster, and safer to put their products on a boat headed to Havana rather than have the boat round the tip of the peninsula Florida to reach the St. Augustine area or to try to cart their goods across the top of Florida on these broken disrepair roads, which in a sense cut Florida into two separate economies. Havana receiving the products of the west side and the east side always facing food shortages and price gouging. Governor Salazar estimated that most of the prices in the market St. Augustine were double those found in other markets that he had found in the Spanish New World. And a final reason why a westward road was desired was the rumor that the French were intending to plant a colony on the Gulf Coast. A laughable claim to many at the time because as far as the Spanish knew, the French were huddled along the coast of the St. Lawrence in modern-day Canada. But things change. Governor Salazar was relieved in November of 1680 when his replacement arrived, a man named Juan Marquez Cabrera. Cabrera brought 50 soldiers with him and immediately began firing Florida Donos men from the local garrison to accommodate his men.

[00:14:33]In the governor's defense, the Florida Donos were only supposed to fill these positions in the garrison when they could not be filled by outside professional soldiers. But the 53 men he laid off were actually a sizable part of the working age population of St. Augustine, which had not grown in the last decade and still had at most 600 people. And now some of these men took their families and left for Havana.

[00:14:54]Governor Cabrera then tries to tax all the shipping exported from Apalachee to Havana in an attempt to remedy some of the east-west trade problem. This caused the powerful merchants in Havana to stop shipping to St. Augustine altogether in protest, creating even more shortages and inflated prices in the markets. The governor relented and was forced to accept the status quo. Then sends a force of men down the west side of the peninsula to confront the powerful Calusa people upon report that they held Spaniards as slaves. This had happened before. The Calusa violently pushed back the governor's force who flee back to St. Augustine in complete failure. The Calusa remained stubbornly independent of the Spanish. Then to the north, along the coast, the Spanish missions and their native population are attacked by a new, unknown Native American group, and spotted among them were men from the new Carolina colony. Unable to organize any sort of attack on the English, the governor has the Wallay natives condense their settlements and retract southward so they could be better defended. In closing out Governor Cabrera's first year in office, he receives a single win when the chief of the Coita, the principal town of the lower Muskogee Creek, travels to the St. Augustine area to offer the governor homage. The Muskogee up to this point made trouble by raiding the Apalachee and other Spanish protected tribes, and they often rejected the Franciscans again as as recent as 3 years ago. And now suddenly they offer their allegiance and welcomed the Franciscans. It is likely the same English allied natives raiding the Wallay were also attacking the Muskogee, and the lower Creek decided that the Spanish, who never sponsored such raids, were now a safe haven and the one they needed at the moment. The governor took their submission as an agreement to become subjects of the Spanish Crown.

[00:16:41]The chief of the Coita probably agreed to the arrangement and saw it as one of mutual responsibilities, not an eternal submission of his entire population.

[00:16:50]After this, the governor has a year of peace and quiet, but rumors persist of a gathering coalition of pirates intending to pick apart Spanish Florida bit by bit. The Fort in Apalachee was attacked again in February of 1683. Governor Cabrera receives word that the French privateer Michel Sue de Grammont planned to attack St. Augustine in the spring.

[00:17:14]When Grammont landed 300 of his buccaneers on Anastasia Island, the Spanish were ready for him, running off the raiders easily. But then the invaders fell upon the local Mocama tribe in the aftermath. The governor orders that the natives of this region, then again, contract and move closer to St. Augustine. At this, some of the northern Guale refused and began opening up a peaceful relationship with the English to the north, feeling that the Spanish could no longer protect them, which was becoming increasingly true.

[00:17:40]After this attack, the governor has the free African male population form a separate segregated militia, raising 48 men arms in 1683. From here on, the captains of this militia will widely be considered the leaders of the African community of St. Augustine, which itself will eventually be segregated from the rest of the city into a site called Fort Mose.

[00:18:02]Then in 1684, a group of Scots decided to settle in the Carolina colony, but their chosen location was well south of Charleston, and in fact near the former Spanish settlement of Santa Elena, the one-time capital of Spanish Florida. To Governor Cabrera, this seemed to be a clear violation of the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. But the crown urged him to keep the peace with Carolina if possible. But the very next year, it was these Scots who were spotted raiding villages alongside their Yamasee allies. Now, the governor could not condone this. By the summer of 1686, Governor Cabrera readied 150 troops and enlisted the galleys of a privateer named Alejandro Tomás de León to attack the Scottish settlement known to them as Stuart's Town, found in the vicinity of modern-day Beaufort, South Carolina. They arrived to find the settlement recently abandoned. Upon their approach, they burned Stuart's Town to the ground, and they gave chase to the fleeing Scots. They make it as far as Edisto Island, and then they destroy the governor's plantation there.

[00:19:05]They take two indentured servants and 11 enslaved people with them, intending to attack Charleston itself, but then a hurricane struck, and the Spanish make a hasty retreat back to St. Augustine.

[00:19:16]Their flagship was lost in the storm, but the attack was a resounding success.

[00:19:21]The Scots never rebuilt and the governor of Carolina reestablished diplomatic relations with Spanish Florida. The Carolinians wouldn't dare settle that far south again for another 25 years and it would be another 16 before they tried to directly attack Spanish Florida again. Now, on the west side of Florida, an old foe by the name of Dr. Henry Woodward began trading with the lower Creek Muskogee. This was the same man captured by the Spanish decades ago who eventually directed the pirate Robert Searles to attack St. Augustine in 1668.

[00:19:53]Still at it, Woodward pulled the lower Creek back away from their Spanish allegiance and incited them to raid the Apalachee for captives, which the traders out of Charleston would then sell in the Caribbean slavery. The Creek were paid for their captives and benefited from having the population of their enemy neighbors drained away. The Spanish followed up this attack by attacking the Yamasee, an English allied group in December of the same year. Now, without their Scottish allies, pushing them further up the coast and inadvertently into a more protective care of the English. Now, in the west, Governor Cabrera sent Spanish soldiers and allied native warriors into Creek country to hunt down Woodward and his companions. The Creek were resistant to give up their traders and what followed were years of Spaniards hunting Englishmen in Creek country, leading to an outright rejection of Spanish authority by the lower Creek in 1691.

[00:20:48]And further to the west, Governor Cabrera received word that the French had indeed made a colony somewhere along the Gulf, but nobody knew exactly where it was. He sends out a number of expeditions to troll the coastline, but Governor Cabrera never finds it. With a French phantom lurking, native groups realigning with the Spanish, and the Castillo nowhere near finished, Governor Cabrera's spirit was nearly spent. He was finally pushed over the edge by the Franciscans, who protested the governor's constant demands that their natives condense settlements, which caused many of them to leave Spanish dominion. And for the Franciscans, this meant the loss of souls that could have been saved. The governor went further and used Father Juan de los Zeidas' corn supply to feed refugees from this displacement. This prompted the clergy to refuse to give the governor the sacrament, essentially being excommunicated. And after 7 years of hard work that only seemed to afford him blame, the governor reports to the king the following. Next to my salvation, there is nothing I long for more than to have the good fortune of leaving this place whenever God may help me.

[00:21:56]I personally felt the same way during a bad stay in Florida in 2011, but that's neither here nor there. Just establishing that I feel for the guy.

[00:22:03]After this, he deserts his post. He's arrested by Spanish officials, and he drops out of the historical record completely.

[00:22:11]The new governor, Diego de Losada, arrived in August of 1687. And immediately following this, a boat of people arrive from Charleston. Eight men, two women, and one child escaping their enslavement. Eventually, their master came to St. Augustine to demand their return. The Spanish refused, and the newly freed Africans laughed at their former master's hubris. The men from this group became paid laborers on the Castillo, and the women were hired and paid, of course, to work in the governor's house. The governor also learned of a pirate living in the local church taking sanctuary from the last governor. His name was Andrew Ranson.

[00:22:48]And years before, he and 10 others were hung for piracy, but Andrew's rope snapped, and the Catholic priest took this as a sign from God and saved him from Governor Cabrera, who very much wanted Andrew dead. Governor Losada learned that this Andrew had extensive knowledge of artillery and carpentry and removed his death sentence on condition that he, too, work on the Castillo, the construction of which continued to help St. Augustine gain in population, now somewhere north of 1,400 people, roughly on par with that of Charleston. And the Native American villages nearby, beginning to recover, had 12 or 13,000 allied Catholic natives. The town of St. Augustine grew outward and new houses were being constructed right outside of the Castillo. The wealthier inhabitants decided to use the same coquina stone as the fort, and you can still see traces of these stones today in the oldest buildings of St. Augustine. But with the growth, the supply problems were as bad as ever. Governor Lozada envisioned Apalachee becoming the breadbasket for St. Augustine, but again had to tackle the issue of transportation. The governor even allowed ships from other nations to bring their supplies to port, collecting no customs, just to ensure a food supply, which upset the local treasury officials but kept the people fed. And the supply of hard coin in the colony was as low as ever. In 1689, Governor Lozada asked for an emergency supply of coins minted in vellon, that being a coin more copper than silver but often used to give the impression of a higher value silver coin. Governor Lozada was debasing the monetary supply of the economy, but it was enough to get the colony through this hard time when the situado would not be paid out for another 6 years. And it is around this same time, 1689, that the Spanish on their 11th attempt discover the secret French colony founded by the famous explorer La Salle. La Salle intended to settle at the mouth of the Mississippi River and thus gain control of the entryway to the heart of the continent.

[00:24:47]However, he missed the Mississippi and ended up settling in what is now Victoria County, Texas, where he is murdered by one of his own, and And of the other inhabitants were killed by the local Native Americans. The Spanish arrive, recover two children from the natives, and report back on the Grizzly aftermath. For a time, the Floridanos would not have to worry about colonies cropping up along the Gulf, which is fortunate for them because moving into the 1690s, the traders from Charleston are incentivizing their native allies to conduct more slave raids than ever, especially on those groups under Spanish protection. This would enrich the personal wealth of the individuals involved and strengthen the Carolina colony. It would also strengthen the native tribes that were involved in the trade, again by draining away their enemy population, but also providing an opportunity to adopt captives and increase their own numbers. The effects of which though were devastating on the natives of Spanish Florida, the Franciscan missions, and Spanish Florida as a whole, and the attacks will only intensify from this point on. The Apalachee were likely the largest target for the English, so the Spanish construct forts throughout their territory, and they continue to support the Apalachee on their counter raids in a lower Creek territory. This would only serve as fuel to create blood feuds between the Apalachee and the Creek.

[00:26:03]Governor Lozada's term ended in 1693 without finishing the Castillo. Instead, he set his mind towards designing a seawall to protect St. Augustine from storm surges and the shifting sandbars around the harbor, which given the right winds would reform along the defensive works and even pile against houses. He hands this project off to the new governor, Don Laureano de Torres.

[00:26:25]Governor Torres directs the resources of the colony towards finishing the Castillo, which he accomplishes finally in August of 1695 after 23 years of construction. A four-sided stone fortress with bastions on each corner, today we might call it a star fort, is the oldest standing masonry fort in the continental United States. As much as it was a victory for the governor, the construction of the Castillo, as mentioned before, brought in extra funds for the colony. It created jobs, and during this time St. Augustine nearly tripled in population. Perhaps the long construction period was intentional by the local Floridanos. I think we've all seen a stretch of road in our day with cones up for months for no good reason.

[00:27:08]Now, the seawall project offered some employment and was partially funded by outside pledges from the crown and from New Spain. And it became more pressing as St. Augustine faced a sudden flood the year after the completion of the Castillo that came on so quick.

[00:27:23]Supposedly, people ran naked out of their houses and ran to the native villages on the high ground, the Castillo offering no protection from Mother Nature without a seawall. Before the people of St. Augustine could fully recover, a Franciscan friar was murdered by the members of the Mayaca tribe who lived in the mission villages after years of complaints about the friars forcing people to work for them. This incident caused a sudden exodus of many of the natives fearing the Spanish would again exact vengeance on all of them.

[00:27:52]Many would return in time, but this is just another example of how Spanish Florida was slowly losing their native subjects, which again greatly hurt the food supply of the colony already suffering. They were dependent on local natives and their corn crop. By 1697, the rations for the soldiers in the Castillo were so low soldiers were seen begging for food or foraging the woods for roots. In one instance, a soldier wrote an anonymous letter to the governor threatening to aid the French if they were to attack St. Augustine if rations were not increased. The governor, like many of his predecessors, would have to resort to buying food off of ships from rival empires, which the crown at times allowed to happen. And as terrible as the raids from the English-allied natives were on the mission natives, the long-independent tribes of Florida, such as the Calusa by this time, were also being whittled down by the slave raids. They, long independent, now sought out the friendship of the Spanish on chance of receiving some level of protection. In the Calusa are telling case because they had expelled or enslaved Spaniards from their territory since the time of the conquistadors. Living on the southwestern side of the Florida Peninsula, the English sponsored raids now penetrated down into what is now the Fort Myers region of Florida. On the western side of Florida around the same time in 1698, Pensacola was resettled by the Spaniards who abandoned the site 137 years prior. Hoping to secure the Gulf now from new interlopers and providing another fort to secure the western end of the colony. But just in January of 1699, the Spanish building Pensacola spot a French fleet and they make friendly commerce with them. The French claim that they came to map the coast. This lie enabled them to slip right through the Spaniards grip and create the settlement of Biloxi and with it the lower end of French Louisiana. Years ago, the Spanish imagined a royal road connecting Spanish Florida to New Mexico which never happened. And now they had a French colony isolating Florida from the other Spanish colonies. Luckily for Governor Torres, his term in office ended and he handed the job over to Jose de Zuniga, a veteran of Spanish wars in Europe. He could not have arrived at a better time because Spanish Florida was in trouble. In Charleston, the local assembly there elects an interim governor named James Moore who immediately begins preparations to invade either Biloxi or St. Augustine even without a declaration of war between the colonial powers. The man was fueled by personal profit to be made through the slave trade, personal hatred towards Catholics, and the chance to further his own political career through a victory on the battlefield. Charleston by this time had outpaced the growth of St. Augustine. It had a steady food supply and it supported around 7,000 people in population, 3,000 of which were enslaved. Whereas St. Augustine still lingered around 2,000 people somewhere south of there, and those people were starving.

[00:30:45]Governor Zúñiga sent out ships for supplies and for funds for the Castillo, which had very little powder, and cannons, which by and large were no longer operational. These ships were all caught up in the outbreak of Queen Anne's War, otherwise known as the War of Spanish Succession, which pit the English Empire against the French and Spanish, giving Governor Moore free reign to enact his plans. He first intended to take St. Augustine, then march west, take out Pensacola, and then Biloxi, knocking the French and the Spanish out of the Southeast entirely, ideally, in one campaign.

[00:31:18]The troubles began in May, when the Lower Creek destroyed the Timucua village of Santa Fe. Governor Zúñiga sends a mixed force of 800 mostly native warriors to retaliate against the Creek, but the Creek found this force and were able to ambush the Spanish and their native allies, known as the Battle of Flint River in October of 1702.

[00:31:38]It really wasn't much of a battle at all. The Creek killed or sold into slavery somewhere around 500 of the governor's 800 men, a complete disaster.

[00:31:48]They wiped away any resistance the English would face if they were to march southward towards St. Augustine. That wasn't lost on Governor Moore, who took his army of 500 to 600 men south with another 300 to 600 native allies, completely destroying all the missions and Spanish outposts along the way, scattering the Spanish-allied natives and selling many into Caribbean slavery.

[00:32:12]Grinding his way down to the walls of the Castillo de San Marcos itself, where Governor Zúñiga sheltered the entire population of St. Augustine. By his count, 1,445 civilians, abandoning the city to the English while sending boats to Havana for help. Inside the fort, he only had around 230 soldiers, augmented by 180 others, including the native warriors and the African militia. After 137 years of settlement in Spanish Florida, the entire colony now consisted of these poor individuals in the Castillo and a few soldiers at Pensacola desperately fighting off the Creek.

[00:32:48]Governor Moore had them and he knew it.

[00:32:51]He laid a siege of the Castillo. He brought four small cannons with him and slowly moved his forces closer and closer. Moore also borrowed ships from the merchants of Charleston and moved them ever closer in the harbor creating a slow strangulation of the Spanish in the fort. Governor Zúñiga used his precious supply of powder in his old cannons to keep the English at a distance. But one of these cannons exploded killing three Spanish soldiers and wounding another five. A loss the governor could not afford and also a signal to Governor Moore of Carolina that although the Spanish had many cannons mounted on the Castillo, many of them were likely not functional if Governor Zúñiga thought it best to use that cannon. Now unknown to both governors, each side only had about three months supply of food. Now Zúñiga inside the fort, the veteran of many wars, had no intention of surrendering but also almost no faith in the fighting age men of the fort, especially the non-Spaniards. Governor Moore had numerical superiority but also led an army that very much wanted to return home. They didn't see the need to siege the formidable Castillo when they had their captives to sell and St. Augustine was just wide open for pillaging. His forces, and especially his native allies, could leave at any moment. It was now on Moore to actually press the Spanish into surrendering. Moore unleashed his cannons upon the walls of the Castillo. But the strange coquina stone from which the fort was made did not shatter under bombardment. But it also didn't deflect the cannon fire.

[00:34:17]Instead, the coquina, mostly made of ancient seashells, gave away in a brittle fashion to each cannonball and reportedly absorbed the cannonballs without causing radiating fractures that would crack entire blocks. In my Carolina episodes, I compared this stone to Floriform, if you've ever used it.

[00:34:34]Imagine pushing your finger into a half-gallon block of ice cream. This was the secret power of the Castillo, and nobody could have known it until it was tested. Governor Moore was beside himself. He sends word to the governor of English Jamaica, pleading him to come with more guns and larger cannons. At the same time, Governor Zúñiga, from inside the Castillo, observes the English using the north end of St. Augustine for living quarters, and uses again his dwindling supply to fire upon his own city, destroying the houses near the Castillo.

[00:35:05]Toward the end of November, Moore's trenches were within musket shot, and he authorized the burning of portions of the city. The siege, which began on November 10th, only ended after December 28th, when a fleet arrived from Spanish Cuba, not English Jamaica. Governor Moore's ships, which he borrowed, were trapped in the harbor and suddenly at risk of being taken. He burned them, torched the rest of the city, and retreated for Charleston. The Spanish were suddenly free and had their lives, [music] but not much else. Zúñiga reports that he lost only four men, seemingly a miracle. Moore loses his position as governor over the southern counties of Carolina, and the Floridanos are given about a year of relative peace. The attack spurred a flood of new funding and soldiers into the colony from the Spanish crown. But rebuilding St. Augustine would take a very long time. By 1704, former Governor Moore's reputation had recovered enough that the South Carolina government actually authorized him to take a small number of Englishmen and join the Lower Creek and Yamasee, intending to completely destroy the Apalachee, an integral part of Spanish Florida. Over the next 2 years, the Creek and the English take thousands of Apalachee captives and sell them into slavery. They run the few Spanish soldiers out of the Apalachee province.

[00:36:22]>> [music] >> Some Apalachee agree to move away and become tributaries to the English. Many flee toward St. Augustine or French Louisiana. Governor Zúñiga reports the only village left in Apalachee loyal to the Spanish after this is the one right outside of the fort at Pensacola.

[00:36:38]Apalachee was no more. The historian John Peiker writes the following of the desolation.

[00:36:44]What is now the Florida Panhandle was almost completely depopulated and Spanish influence in the region declined dramatically.

[00:36:54]The enemy natives ritualistically tortured and killed the Franciscans they captured. They skinned native Catholics alive. Moore brags about enslaving more than 4,000 Apalachee in just the year 1704. Zúñiga reports 3,000 Apalachee were killed during this time. The Apalachee had only about 8,000 people before these attacks. So, you could do the math on that one. Apalachee as a Spanish province was no more. The Spanish burned over their own wooden forts. The Apalachee people were scattered within two generations. Only those who fled to Louisiana maintained any semblance of their own unique culture. Only about 200 Apalachee make it to resettle in the St. Augustine area. And this is what was left of Spanish Florida. A small enclave in Pensacola and the St. Augustine area.

[00:37:43]>> [music] >> That's it. I know I'm being redundant.

[00:37:45]The city itself was in ashes with a few native villages huddled around it totaling a mere 400 people down from what I whatever I told you. 13,000, 14,000 just a couple years prior.

[00:37:57]In the previous century, going back 100 years or so, the native population, the Catholic native population, numbered perhaps 25,000 people. The cattle ranches and the farms that once stretched across the top of the peninsula were now abandoned. 32 mission villages were destroyed by the end of the war. Most of the territory of Spanish Florida was depopulated. I know I'm being redundant, but picture that. And with it, the fiction that Spain actually had any dominion over the Southeast. It is said that Moore and his native allies depopulated all the enemy native groups within 600 miles of Charleston. In response to this, a single amphibious attack was made by a combined French-Spanish force against Charleston in 1706, resulting in a French retreat and the death of 42 on the Spanish side and the capture of 350 other Spaniards and their native allies.

[00:38:52]Governor Zúñiga gladly took his reassignment elsewhere. The new governor, Governor Martínez, estimated that by January of 1708, over the course of this short war, 10 to 12,000 Native Americans had been killed or enslaved by the Creek, Yamasee, and English coalition. As an addition to the Apalachee, the Timucua and the Wallae were also taken away for enslavement. The few who remained represented at most the other half of the 400 natives now in the St. Augustine area. Reportedly, many were so traumatized they refused to go beyond the sight of the Castillo.

[00:39:28]In the south, the Calusa begged Spanish authorities to be rescued off the continent completely, and in 1711, many would be evacuated to Cuba. The one saving grace for the Floridanos and their neighbors was the turning of the sentiments among the lower Creek, who after all greatly outnumbered the English allies that they had on the field and can be credited as much or more for the destruction of Spanish Florida than their English allies. In 1710, the Coweta, who led the Lower Muscogee Creek, began sending envoys to the Spanish. The leader of the Coweta was a man known to Europeans as Emperor Brims, and his stance on the English at this time was tilting towards neutral.

[00:40:08]Likewise, the English, even before the official end of the war, essentially ran out of the will to fight on. And frankly, who was left to enslave? Well, the answer to that, of course, was their own allies. And over the next 5 years or so, the English allied tribes are manipulated by traders into falling into old rivalries and attacking each other.

[00:40:28]And in a shocking turn of fate, one day in 1715, a group of chiefs representing 161 villages of the Creek Muskogee and the Yamasee present themselves to the governor at St. Augustine. They now sought protection from the English. They pledged themselves to the Spanish and agreed to accept Franciscan missionaries. Governor Martinez spends everything he has to woo them. He feeds them, supplies them for battle, and offers a 25 peso bounty for the head of any Carolinian or English allied native.

[00:40:59]Many of these supplies were acquired from the English themselves as friendly commerce had resumed. Emperor Brim forms a pan-native alliance in the Southeast to attack Carolina. In the resulting war, the Yamasee are run off their land by the English. Many resettle in Spanish Florida on the very land that they helped depopulate 10 years before. The Lower Creek also continue to visit St. Augustine and agree to submit to Spanish authority. A few chiefs even travel to New Spain to pledge their loyalty to the Viceroy himself. The Spanish filtered through their lands and many Lower Creek agreed to settle in the abandoned lands of Spanish Florida. These newcomers were the ancestors or at least one founding population of the Seminole people. And once again, despite everything that had happened, Spanish Florida was reborn.

[00:41:51]And for the listener of this story, if you managed to make it through this season, Spanish Florida will survive to be featured in a future season of this podcast. But for our last episode, it's important to know that here in 1718, although many Creek now moved into Spanish governed lands, Emperor Brim announced a three-way policy of neutrality with the French, English, and Spanish intending to carry on commerce with all three without being dragged into a war with any. And it is here that the outside world learns that the lower Creek under Emperor Brims and the upper Creek Muscogee had formed a confederacy.

[00:42:27]And in our last episode of the season, we will see how the Muscogee went from being mountain builders living in paramount chiefdoms to confederates through a period of time archaeologists refer to as the Mississippian shatter zone. Pretty cool. Until then, this has been the other states of America history podcast. I'm Eric Yanis. Thank you for listening.