Blood and fire
Monday, December 26, 2016
*Rogelio Zelada
For Colonel James Moore, former governor of the newly created colony of Carolina, the time has come to carry out the plans of his predecessor, Joseph Blake. The growing English presence in the southeast of the country has strengthened British intentions to dominate the whole region. The conflict and tensions that grew in intensity after the establishment of Charles Town in 1670 heightened the English settlers’ ambition. They were willing to do anything to occupy the rich lands of the South to increase their plantations. Traders, slave dealers and common robbers continually penetrated the territory that belonged to the Spanish crown, creating repeated outbreaks of conflict.
The establishment of missions in Florida began shortly after the founding of St. Augustine. At first, the Society of Jesus was in charge of organizing the missionary work in the region. These were times of great hostility on the part of the natives, who murdered a good number of Jesuits, and the order decided to postpone this evangelizing activity and wait for better times, for the time being. In 1573, Franciscan religious took up the apostolic challenge and settled in St. Augustine. They ministered to the Guale and the Timucua Indians first, and 60 years later they had founded a significant number of missions among the Apalachee.
The growth of this great missionary effort extended the Catholic faith to what is now northern Florida and part of southeastern Georgia. The Franciscans were organized in four provinces that corresponded to the different languages spoken by the Apalachees, the Guales, the Timucuas and the Mayacas. The missions corresponded to the settlements that already existed, so that the new believers could remain in their natural surroundings. In each indigenous community, the friars built temples out of wood and thatched roofs, well adapted to the culture and family experience of the natives of Florida.
The Franciscans were serious about getting to know the native culture. For this purpose, Father Francisco Pareja wrote the first catechism in the language of the Timucua, a very effective tool until the English exterminated this whole ethnic group in the so-called Queen Anne's War.
It is estimated that by 1704 the flourishing network of Franciscan missions included more than 20,000 natives and about 1,500 Spaniards. By that time, the Apalachee area, at the eastern end of what we now know as the Florida panhandle, was the breadbasket of the entire region and the main food supplier for St. Augustine and Pensacola
In 1702, then-governor James Moore convinced the English colonists that it would be beneficial to attack and loot the city of St. Augustine, an attempt that ended in terrible failure. It was mainly aimed at capturing the natives of the Catholic missionary communities to sell and use them as slaves. Although Moore's expedition was a resounding failure, he did destroy all the missions that were in the Guale province, near the coast of Georgia.
A new attempt the following year, with the promise that it would cost the settlers nothing, allowed him to recruit 50 of them and also to obtain the unexpected support of the Creek Indians, old enemies of the Appalachee. In addition, Moore had the laws of the Spanish crown in his favor: they prevented the delivery of muskets and any type of weapons to the natives under Spain’s dominion, which made it very easy to attack a totally defenseless population.
With the support of a thousand Creek Indians, he first attacked the mission of Ayubale, where Father Angel Miranda — who had taken refuge in the temple with 26 men and 58 women and children — was able to resist the terrible siege for nine hours until he ran out of arrows. As they left the church, already in ruins, all were tortured and killed on site.
On his march, James Moore destroyed everything in his way. In his report to the governor of Carolina, he claimed to have eliminated more than 1,100 natives — men, women and children. More than 9,000 fled to other, safer lands; and he took 4,300 Appalachians to the Carolina plantations, mostly women and children who were sold as slaves to English settlers. With fury, blood and fire, the 124 missions that the Franciscans had established and served from 1553 to 1706 where destroyed when they were forced to cease their missionary work.
The surviving natives took refuge in St. Augustine, which was never occupied by the English.
In his report, Moore congratulated himself that "all this I have done only with the loss of four whites and 15 Indians and without costing a cent to the citizens. Before this expedition we were more fearful of an attack by land from the Spaniards of Apalachee and their natives, together with the French of Mississippi and their natives, than by all the enemy forces by sea. What we have accomplished prevents them altogether from trying anything against us from the ground."
In 1763, Spain handed over the remaining part of Florida to England, in exchange for the return of the city and port of Havana, on the island of Cuba. Along with the majority of the Spanish population that left Florida on that date was a very large group of converted natives, genuine exiles who never returned to their places of origin. They left on ships bound for Cuba and the Spanish possessions of the Caribbean.
