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THE EARLY HISTORY
THE LIES BEGIN at the border. When you cross over into Florida from Georgia or Alabama, there are large signs that read WELCOME TO THE SUNSHINE STATE. (They also announce that Florida is OPEN FOR BUSINESS, an addition at the behest of the very conservative Governor Rick Scott.) But contrary to the implication of the state’s famous motto, Florida is not the nation’s sunniest state. Not even close. The state’s percent-sun number (the average percentage of time between sunrise and sunset that the sun reaches the ground) is a respectable 66 percent, but that is exceeded by Arizona (85 percent), Nevada (79 percent), New Mexico (76 percent), Colorado (71 percent), Hawaii (71 percent), California, Wyoming, and Oklahoma (68 percent each). Florida averages only ninety-seven clear days annually (days with no clouds, a number that depends in part on where in Florida you live), which is fewer than the number of clear days in twenty-two other states. Where we do shine, so to speak, is in the number of hot and humid days, but somehow, “Welcome to the Muggy State” or “Florida: The Partly Cloudy State” just don’t work as marketing slogans.
Also contrary to popular perception, Florida was not named for its abundant flowering species. Florido is the Spanish word for “flowery” (also “florid,” incidentally), so many people assume that Florida means “the land of flowers.” Not so. The name Pascua Florida was bestowed upon the state by the Spanish explorer Ponce de León on Easter Day, 1513, as Ponce and his crew sailed into what is now Matanzas Bay. In Spain, the Easter Celebration is known as the Feast of the Flowers, and a literal translation of Pascua Florida is therefore “Flowery Easter.” The name Ponce chose for the state was not intended to refer to the orchids, violets, wild petunias, and other flowering plants that are native to Florida, but rather to the Catholic celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ.
THE SPANISH INCURSION
Juan Ponce de León led the first Spanish expedition into what is now Florida, and so he is often said to have been the state’s “discoverer.” Of course, Florida was occupied for twelve thousand years or so before Ponce and his hardy band of conquistadores showed up. Ponce did not “discover” the state, he only initiated (or rather, tried to initiate) the European conquest of Native American lands in the region.
Ponce’s 1513 expedition came ashore somewhere near present-day Saint Augustine. This was when the name Pascua Florida was bestowed. He then sailed south and eventually came upon what we now know as the Florida Keys, the outermost of which are the Dry Tortugas. Tortuga is Spanish for “turtle,” and Ponce evidently chose the name because of the turtles he observed there. (It was “dry” because there seemed to be no fresh water anywhere on the island.) He then turned north, landed near what is now Port Charlotte, ran into some very unfriendly natives, and hightailed it back to Puerto Rico.
Ponce returned to the Port Charlotte area in 1521 with the intention of establishing a colony but again ran afoul of the local tribesmen, the Calusa. Ponce was fatally wounded in this confrontation, and the Spanish colonization effort was abandoned until 1565. After the face-off with the Calusa, the conquistadores withdrew to their base in Cuba, where Ponce de León died from his wounds. His remains were interred and subsequently moved to Puerto Rico, where his burial crypt can be viewed today in the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista in Old San Juan.
It is often said that Ponce came to Florida to find the mythical Fountain of Youth. More lies, of course—not that you would know it if you went to Saint Augustine to visit a tourist attraction called Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. The park houses practically nothing of genuine archaeological significance, and one assumes that the reference to archaeology in the park’s name is intended to impart a faux impression of scientific merit or importance. In fact, there is no legitimate historical evidence to suggest that Ponce was looking for anything like a Fountain of Youth. As was true of all the Spanish explorers of the New World, he was looking for gold and silver to seal his favor with the Spanish Crown. The whole Fountain of Youth business is a myth likely perpetrated by one Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who is said to have despised Ponce and cooked up the Fountain of Youth story to depict Ponce as a gullible, dim-witted fool. Even in sixteenth-century Spain, the idea that water could reverse aging was considered pretty unlikely.
As for the park, it showcases a primitive fountain (a stone well from which hundreds of tourists imbibe daily), a number of reconstructions (“historically correct examples”) of native Timucuan villages (the Timucua were another tribe that inhabited Florida at the time of the European “discovery”), a reconstruction of a 1587 church, a Founders Riverwalk, miles of natural beauty, and a new three-thousand-square-foot pavilion “perfect for weddings and other events.”
Between 1513 and 1559, there were numerous efforts to colonize the region for Spain, but they all ended in abject failure. Hernando de Soto and his conquistadores, for example, wandered around the region near present-day Tallahassee for four years searching for silver and gold, found nothing, gave up, and headed west toward the Mississippi, where the explorer died in 1542. In 1559, another Spanish adventurer, Tristán de Luna y Arellano, tried to establish a colony near present-day Pensacola, but this effort came a cropper when a hurricane blew through and destroyed a supply ship. After the 1559 failure, King Philip II of Spain ordered a halt to all further colonization efforts, but the moratorium lasted only six years.
Colonization began anew in 1565 when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés came ashore at what is now known as Matanzas Bay and founded the Presidio of San Agustin, America’s first and oldest continuously inhabited European-origin city. Saint Augustine was established decades before the founding of the first English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, or the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock in 1620.
Matanzas is Spanish for “slaughters,” and that alone tells us something about the city’s violent origins. French Huguenots (Protestants) had established a colony near the mouth of the Saint Johns River in territory claimed by Spain, and Menéndez had been dispatched by the Spanish Crown to dislodge the French settlers and kill any Protestants he came across. He landed near Saint Augustine, then marched his army of a thousand soldiers overland for a surprise attack on the French Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville. The surprise was successful, and virtually all the French men were slaughtered (the women and children were spared). Menéndez also got word of a band of French castaways who had shipwrecked farther south along the coast and dispatched a force to hunt them down. Once found, the castaways surrendered immediately since they had neither arms nor strength nor will to resist. They too were killed. These slaughters occurred near the banks of the river that opens into the bay, so both the river and the bay were named Matanzas.
Menéndez chose the name San Agustin for his Presidio because his force sailed into the bay on August 28, 1565, which happened to be the feast day of Saint Augustine. Augustine is remembered mostly as the theoretician of the “just war,” a doctrine invoked repeatedly by the conquistadores to justify the forcible conversion of heathens to Christianity and the wanton slaughter of those who resisted. Saint Aug was a big fan of Romans 13:4: “… rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Saint Augustine (the city) rapidly became the center of Spanish Florida and was a frequent target of attack. The city (really, little more than a fort in the early years) was burned to the ground in 1586 by the British explorer Sir Francis Drake, then burned numerous times by pirates (and occasionally by the British) in succeeding years. In most cases, the town’s residents were killed or driven away. The city remained vulnerable until the Spanish completed the Castillo de San Marcos in 1695 and Fort Matanzas in 1742.
The Castillo and most of Fort Matanzas remain today and were declared national historical monuments in 1924. Often overrun by tourists, Fort Matanzas is rated by Trip Advisor as #29 of 191 things to do in Saint Augustine. The Castillo is rated #11.
HEY, WE WERE HERE FIRST!
Spain’s troubles in colonizing Florida were of two sorts: unfriendly conditions and even less friendly natives. Wresting ownership of the peninsula from its indigenous inhabitants, both human and otherwise, was harder here than almost anywhere else in North America. All the Spanish colonies in Florida were built on the coasts and near or at the mouths of rivers, for reasons that would be obvious to today’s beachgoers. In addition to the obvious transportation advantages, there are sea breezes on the coasts that keep the temperature and humidity tolerable and the mosquitoes at bay. In the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, venturing even a few miles inland would bring you into impassible swampland, suffocating heat and humidity, vast swarms of mosquitoes, and alligators, crocodiles, bears, and snakes galore.
Copyright © 2019 by James D. Wright
