Native American and Spanish tableware and food stuffs together on the table at Mission San Luis (courtesy of Mission San Luis)

It is estimated that 350,000 Native Americans were living in Florida when Juan Ponce de León sighted the east coast in 1513. Colonialism, however, was not kind to them. Diseases, slaving, warfare, and declining birth rates took a horrific toll.

Juan Ponce’s royal charter, granted in 1512, provided for the “allotment” of  the native people, essentially making them slaves. By the time of Pánfilo de Narváez (1528) and Hernando de Soto (1539) Native Americans were declared to be a free people, subjects of the Spanish crown who should be schooled in Catholicism. In reality such legal admonitions were ignored by conquistadors facing the hardships of Florida. Neither Narváez or de Soto converted a single Native American.

After the founding of the La Florida colony, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his successors arranged for first Jesuit and then Franciscan missionaries to administer to the Timucua and Apalachee in northern Florida. Throughout the 17th century the missions would be the primary arena for interaction between Florida's Native Americans and colonial Spain, though for the most part, Native Americans living south of the missions in central and southern Florida remained beyond the influence of St. Augustine.

At the missions, Native American’s lives were changed as villagers became Christians, adopting new beliefs and religious practices and Spanish names. Native American religious leaders gave way to Catholic priests. New crops such as watermelons, peaches, figs, hazelnuts, oranges, and garbanzo beans were grown in mission gardens, and some native people raised chickens. Others learned how to read and write in Spanish. Native Americans valued Spanish iron tools, glass beads, clothing, and other goods. Even so, the Native Americans at the missions continued many traditional ways, such as methods of building houses.

Native Americans living at the missions provided much of the labor for the Florida colony. They improved and maintained trails, helped build Spanish houses, worked as servants in St. Augustine, labored at ranches near the town and in the mission provinces, and even mined coquina for building St. Augustine’s Castillo. A major activity was tending corn fields whose harvests were carried to Spanish markets in St. Augustine.

Within the town of St. Augustine some Spanish men married Native American women. The presence of their pottery in the town suggests residents integrated native foods and, perhaps, food preparation techniques into their diets.

By the 1760s, 200 years after the founding of St. Augustine, the descendants of the people who had watched the Spaniards come ashore were gone.

Beads such as these from Mission San Luis were common trade items between Native Americans and Spanish (courtesy of Mission San Luis)

 

Florida once again is home to a significant Native American population, including Seminole, Miccosukee, and Creek, all the descendants of people who moved to Florida from the north beginning as early as 1750. Since 1900 Florida has become home to thousands of Native Americans from more than 350 tribes.

Native American Photo Map (Courtesy of Theodore Morris)