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§ 2.—The Seminoles
The Creek nation, so called says Adair from the number of streams that intersected the lowlands they inhabited, more properly Muskogeh, (corrupted into Muscows,) sometimes Western Indians, as they were supposed to have come later than the Uchees,251 and on the early maps Cowetas (Couitias,) and Allibamons from their chief towns, was the last of those waves of migration which poured across the Mississippi for several centuries prior to Columbus. Their hunting grounds at one period embraced a vast extent of country reaching from the Atlantic coast almost to the Mississippi. After the settlement of the English among them, they diminished very rapidly from various causes, principally wars and the ravages of the smallpox, till about 1740 the whole number of their warriors did not exceed fifteen hundred. The majority of these belonged to that branch of the nation, called from its more southern position the Lower Creeks, of mongrel origin, made up of the fragments of numerous reduced and broken tribes, dwelling north and northwest of the Floridian peninsula.252
When Governor Moore of South Carolina made his attack on St. Augustine, he included in his complement a considerable band of this nation. After he had been repulsed they kept possession of all the land north of the St. Johns, and, uniting with certain negroes from the English and Spanish colonies, formed the nucleus of the nation, subsequently called Ishti semoli, wild men,253 corrupted into Seminolies and Seminoles, who subsequently possessed themselves of the whole peninsula and still remain there. Others were introduced by the English in their subsequent invasions, by Governor Moore, by Col. Palmer, and by General Oglethorpe. As early as 1732, they had founded the town of Coweta on the Flint river, and laid claim to all the country from there to St. Augustine.254 They soon began to make incursions independent of the whites, as that led by Toonahowi in 1741, as that which in 1750, under the guidance of Secoffee, forsook the banks of the Apalachicola, and settled the fertile savannas of Alachua, and as the band that in 1808 followed Micco Hadjo to the vicinity of Tallahassie. They divided themselves into seven independent bands, the Latchivue or Latchione, inhabiting the level banks of the St. Johns, and the sand hills to the west, near the ancient fort Poppa, (San Francisco de Pappa,) opposite Picolati, the Oklevuaha, or Oklewaha on the river that bears their name, the Chokechatti, the Pyaklekaha, the Talehouyana or Fatehennyaha, the Topkelake, and a seventh, whose name I cannot find.
According to a writer in 1791,255 they lived in a state of frightful barbarity and indigence, and were “poor and miserable beyond description.” When the mother was burdened with too many children, she hesitated not to strangle the new-born infant, without remorse for her cruelty or odium among her companions. This is the only instance that I have ever met in the history of the American Indians where infanticide was in vogue for these reasons, and it gives us a fearfully low idea of the social and moral condition of those induced by indolence to resort to it. Yet other and by far the majority of writers give us a very different opinion, assure us that they built comfortable houses of logs, made a good, well-baked article of pottery, raised plenteous crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tobacco, swamp and upland rice, peas, melons and squashes, while in an emergency the potatoe-like roots of the china brier or red coonta, the tap root of the white coonta,256 the not unpleasant cabbage of the palma royal and palmetto, and the abundant game and fish, would keep at a distance all real want.257
As may readily be supposed from their vagrant and unsettled mode of life, their religious ideas were very simple. Their notion of a God was vague and ill-defined; they celebrated certain festivals at corn planting and harvest; they had a superstition regarding the transmigration of souls and for this purpose held the infant over the face of the dying mother;258 and from their great reluctance to divulge their real names, it is probable they believed in a personal guardian spirit, through fear of offending whom a like hesitation prevailed among other Indian tribes, as well as among the ancient Romans, and, strange to say, is in force to this day among the lower class of Italians.259 They usually interred the dead, and carefully concealed the grave for fear it should be plundered and desecrated by enemies, though at other times, as after a battle, they piled the slain indiscriminately together, and heaped over them a mound of earth. One instance is recorded260 where a female slave of a deceased princess was decapitated on her tomb to be her companion and servant on the journey to the land of the dead.
A comparison of the Seminole with the Muskogeh vocabulary affords a most instructive lesson to the philologist. With such rapidity did the former undergo a vital change that as early as 1791 “it was hardly understood by the Upper Creeks.”261 The later changes are still more marked and can be readily studied as we have quite a number of vocabularies preserved by different writers.
Ever since the first settlement of these Indians in Florida they have been engaged in a strife with the whites,262 sometimes desultory and partial, but usually bitter, general, and barbarous beyond precedent in the bloody annals of border warfare. In the unanimous judgment of unprejudiced writers, the whites have ever been in the wrong, have ever enraged the Indians by wanton and unprovoked outrages, but they have likewise ever been the superior and victorious party. The particulars of these contests have formed the subjects of separate histories by able writers, and consequently do not form a part of the present work.
Without attempting a more minute specification, it will be sufficient to point out the swift and steady decrease of this and associated tribes by a tabular arrangement of such censual statistics as appear most worthy of trust.
[263] Roberts, First Disc. of Fla., p. 90.
[264] Collections of Georgia Hist. Soc. Vol. II., p. 318.
[265] Ibid., p. 73.
[266] Travels, p. 211.
[267] Nat. History, p. 91.
[268] Report on Indian Affairs, p. 33.
[269] Cohen, Notices of Florida, p. 48.
[270] Sprague, Hist. of the Fla. War, p. 19.
[271] American State Papers, Vol. VI., p. 439.
[272] Hist. of the Fla. War, p. 97.
[273] Ibid., p. 409.
[274] Ibid., p. 512.
[275] Ibid.
Probably within the present year (1859) the last of this nation, the only free representatives of those many tribes east of the Mississippi that two centuries since held undisturbed sway, will bid an eternal farewell to their ancient abodes, and leave them to the quiet possession of that race that seems destined to supplant them.
CHAPTER V.
THE SPANISH MISSIONS
Early Attempts.—Efforts of Aviles.—Later Missions.—Extent during the most flourishing period.—Decay.
It was ever the characteristic of the Spanish conqueror that first in his thoughts and aims was the extension of the religion in which he was born and bred. The complete history of the Romish Church in America would embrace the whole conquest and settlement of those portions held originally by France and Spain. The earliest and most energetic explorers of the New and much of the Old World have been the pious priests and lay brethren of this religion. While others sought gold they labored for souls, and in all the perils and sufferings of long journeys and tedious voyages cheerfully bore a part, well rewarded by one convert or a single baptism. With the same zeal that distinguished them everywhere else did they labor in the unfruitful vineyard of Florida, and as the story of their endeavors is inseparably bound up with the condition of the natives and progress of the Spanish arms, it is with peculiar fitness that the noble toils of these self-denying men become the theme of our investigation.
The earliest explorers, De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, took pains to have with them devout priests as well as bold lancers, and remembered, which cannot be said of all their cotemporaries, that though the natives might possess gold, they were not devoid of souls. The latter included in his complement no less than twelve priests, eight lay brethren, and four clergymen of inferior rank; but their endeavors seem to have achieved only a very paltry and transient success.
The first wholly missionary voyage to the coast of Florida, and indeed to any part of America north of Mexico, was undertaken by Luis Cancel de Balbastro, a Dominican friar, who in 1547 petitioned Charles I. of Spain to fit out an armament for converting the heathen of that country. A gracious ear was lent to his proposal, and two years afterwards, in the spring of 1549, a vessel set sail from the port of Vera Cruz in Mexico, commanded by the skillful pilot Juan de Arana, and bearing to their pious duty Luis Cancel with three other equally zealous brethren, Juan Garcia, Diego de Tolosa, and Gregorio Beteta. Their story is brief and sad. Going by way of Havana they first struck the western coast of the peninsula about 28° north latitude the day after Ascension day. After two months wasted in fruitless efforts to conciliate the natives in various parts, when all but Beteta had fallen martyrs to their devotion to the cause of Christianity, the vessel put back from her bootless voyage, and returned to Vera Cruz.263
Some years afterwards (1559), when Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano founded the colony of Santa Maria de Felipina near where Pensacola was subsequently built, he was accompanied by a provincial bishop and a considerable corps of priests, but as his attempt was unsuccessful and his colony soon disbanded, they could have made no impression on the natives.264
It was not till the establishment of a permanent garrison at St. Augustine by the Adelantado Pedro Menendez de Aviles, that the Catholic religion took firm root in Floridian soil. In the terms of his outfit is enumerated the enrollment of four Jesuit priests and twelve lay brethren. Everywhere he displayed the utmost energy in the cause of religion; wherever he placed a garrison, there was also a spiritual father stationed. In 1567 he sent the two learned and zealous missionaries Rogel and Villareal to the Caloosas, among whom a settlement had already been formed under Francescso de Reinoso. At their suggestion a seminary for the more complete instruction of youthful converts was established at Havana, to which among others the son of the head chief was sent, with what success we have previously seen.
The following year ten other missionaries arrived, one of whom, Jean Babtista Segura, had been appointed Vice Provincial. The majority of these worked with small profit in the southern provinces, but Padre Antonio Sedeño settled in the island of Guale,265 and is to be remembered as the first who drew up a grammar and catechism of any aboriginal tongue north of Mexico; but he reaped a sparse harvest from his toil; for though five others labored with him, we hear of only seven conversions, and four of these infants in articulo mortis. Yet it is also stated that as early as 1566 the Adelantado himself had brought about the conversion of these Indians en masse. A drought of eight months had reduced them to the verge of starvation. By his advice a large cross was erected and public prayer held. A tremendous storm shortly set in, proving abundantly to the savages the truth of his teachings. But they seem to have turned afresh to their wallowing in the mire.
In 1569, the Padre Rogel gave up in despair the still more intractable Caloosas; and among the more cultivated nations surrounding San Felipe, north of the Savannah river, sought a happier field for his efforts. In six months he had learned the language and at first flattered himself much on their aptness for religious instruction. But in the fall, when the acorns ripened, all his converts hastened to decamp, leaving the good father alone in his church. And though he followed them untiringly into woods and swamps, yet “with incredible wickedness they would learn nothing, nor listen to his exhortations, but rather ridiculed them, jeopardizing daily more and more their salvation.” With infinite pains he collected some few into a village, gave them many gifts, and furnished them food and mattocks; but again they most ungratefully deserted him “with no other motive than their natural laziness and fickleness.” Finding his best efforts thrown away on such stiff-necked heathen, with a heavy heart he tore down his house and church, and, shaking the dust off his feet, quitted the country entirely.
At this period the Spanish settlements consisted of three colonies: St. Augustine, originally built south of where it now stands on St. Nicholas creek, and changed in 1566, San Matteo at the mouth of the river of the same name, now the St. Johns,266 and fifty leagues north of this San Felipe in the province of Orista or Santa Helena, now South Carolina. In addition to these there were five block-houses, (casas fuertes), two, Tocobaga and Carlos, on the western coast, one at its southern extremity, Tegesta, one in the province of Ais or Santa Lucea, and a fifth, which Juan Pardo had founded one hundred and fifty leagues inland at the foot of certain lofty mountains, where a cacique Coava ruled the large province Axacàn.267 There seem also to have been several minor settlements on the St. Johns.
Such was the flourishing condition of the country when that “terrible heretic and runaway galley slave,” as the Spanish chronicler calls him, Dominique de Gourgues of Mont Marsain, aided by Pierre le Breu, who had escaped the massacre of the French in 1565, and the potent chief Soturiba, demolished the most important posts (1567). Writers have over-rated the injury this foray did the colony. In reality it served but to stimulate the indomitable energy of Aviles. Though he himself was at the court of Spain and obliged to remain there, with the greatest promptness he dispatched Estevan de las Alas with two hundred and seventy-three men, who rebuilt and equipped San Matheo, and with one hundred and fifty of his force quartered himself in San Felipe.
With him had gone out quite a number of priests. The majority of these set out for the province of Axacàn, under the guidance of the brother of its chief, who had been taken by Aviles to Spain, and there baptized, in honor of the viceroy of New Spain, Don Luis de Velasco. His conversion, however, was only simulation, as no sooner did he see the company entirely remote from assistance, than, with the aid of some other natives, he butchered them all, except one boy, who escaped and returned to San Felipe. Three years after (1569), the Adelantado made an attempt to revenge this murder, but the perpetrators escaped him.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, at the time of the death of Aviles, a firm and extensive foundation had been laid for the Christian religion, though it was by no means professed, as has been asserted, “by all the tribes from Santa Helena, on the north, to Boca Rattones, on the south, and from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.”268
After his death, under the rule of his nephew, Pedro Menendez Marquez, a bold soldier but a poor politician, the colony seems to have dwindled to a very insignificant point. Spanish historians speak vaguely of many nations reduced by him, but such accounts cannot be trusted. At the time of the destruction of St. Augustine by Drake, in 1586, this town was built of wood, and garrisoned by one hundred and fifty men.269 And if we may believe the assertions of the prisoners he brought to England, the whole number of souls, both at this place and at Santa Helena, did not exceed two hundred.270 Only six priests were in the colony; and as to the disposition of the Indians, it was so hostile and dangerous, that for some time subsequent the soldiers dared never leave the fort, even to hunt or fish.271 Yet it was just about this time (1584), that Williams,272 on the authority of his ancient manuscript, states that “the Spanish authorities were acknowledged as far west as the river Mississippi (Empalazada), and north one hundred and forty leagues to the mountains of Georgia!”
As early as 1566, fourteen women had been introduced by Sancho de Arminiega; but we read of no increase, and it is probable that for a long series of years the colony was mainly supported by fresh arrivals.
It was not till 1592, when, in pursuance of an ordinance of the Council of the Indies, twelve Franciscans were deputed to the territory, that the missions took a new start. They were immediately forwarded to various quarters of the province, and for a while seem to have been quite successful in their labors. It is said that in 1594 there were “no less than twenty mission houses.” One of these priests, Pedro de Corpa, superior of the mission of Tolemato (Tolemaro) near the mouth of the St. Marys river, by his unsparing and harsh rebukes, excited the anger of the natives to such a degree that, headed by the chief of Guale, they rose en masse, and murdered him at the foot of the altar. Nor did this glut their vengeance. Bearing his dissevered head upon a pole as a trophy and a standard, they crossed to the neighboring island of Guale, and there laid waste the missions Topiqui, Asao, Ospo, and Assopo. The governor of St. Augustine lost no time in hastening to the aid of the sufferers; and, though the perpetrators of the deeds could nowhere be found, by the destruction of their store-houses and grain fields, succeeded by a long drought, “which God visited upon them for their barbarity,” such a dreadful famine fell upon them that their tribe was nearly annihilated (1600).
In 1602, Juan Altimirano, bishop of Cuba, visited this portion of his diocess, and was much disheartened by the hopeless barbarity of the natives. So much so, indeed, that years afterwards, when holding discussion with the bishop of Guatemala concerning the query, “Is God known by the light of Nature?” and the latter pressing him cogently with Cicero, he retorted, “Ah, but Cicero had not visited Florida, or he would never have spoken thus.”
This discouraging anecdote to the contrary, the very next year, in the general assembly that met at Toledo, Florida, in conjunction with Havana and Bahama, was constituted a Custodia of eleven convents, and in 1612, they were elevated into an independent Provincia, under the name of Santa Helena, with the head convent at Havana, and Juan Capillas appointed first Provincial Bishop.273 An addition of thirty-two Franciscans, partly under Geronimo de Ore in 1612, and partly sent out by Philip III., the year after, sped the work of conversion, and for a long time subsequent, we find vague mention of nations baptized and churches erected.
About the middle of the century, (1649,) the priests had increased to fifty, and the episcopal revenue amounted to four hundred dollars. At this time St. Augustine numbered “more than three hundred inhabitants.” So great had been the success of the spiritual fathers, that in 1655, Diego de Rebolledo, then Governor and Captain-General, petitioned the king to erect the colony into a bishopric; a request which, though favorably viewed, was lost through delay and procrastination. Similar attempts, which were similarly frustrated, were made by his successors Juan Marquez in 1682, and Juan Ferro in 1689.
Notwithstanding these indications of a lively energy, a very different story is told by the traveller of Carthagena, François Coreal, who visited the peninsula in 1669. He mentions no settlements but San Augustine and San Matheo,—indeed, expressly states that there were none,274—and even these were in a sorry plight enough, (assez degarnies.) Either he must have been misinformed, or the work of conversion proceeded with great and sudden rapidity after his visit, as less than twenty years afterwards, (1687,) when by the attempts of Juan Marquez to remove the natives to the West India Islands, many forsook their homes for distant regions, they left a number of missions deserted, as San Felipe, San Simon, Sapola, Obaldiqui, and others. This marked increase was largely owing to a subsidy of twenty-four Franciscans under Alonzo de Moral in 1676, and the energetic action of the Bishop of Cuba, who spared no pains to facilitate the advent of missionaries to all parts.275
In pursuance of the advice of Pablo de Hita, Governor-General, attempts were renewed in 1679 to convert the nations of the southern extremity of the peninsula, and in 1698, there were fourteen Franciscans employed among them. These Indians are described as “idolaters and given to all abominable vices,” and not a few of the missionaries suffered martyrdom in their efforts to reclaim them.276
Towards the close of the century, (1696,) the condition of St. Augustine is described by Jonathan Dickinson277 as follows:—“It is about three-quarters of a mile in length, not regularly built, the houses not very thick, they having large orchards, in which are plenty of oranges, lemmons, pome-citrons, lymes, figgs, and peaches: the houses, most of them, are old buildings, and not half of them inhabited. The number of men that belong to government being about three hundred, and many of them are kept as sentinalls at their lookouts. At the north end of the town stands a large fortification, being a quadrangel with bastions. Each bastion will contain thirteen guns, but there is not passing two-thirds of fifty-two mounted.... The wall of the fortification is about thirty foot high, built of sandstone sawed [coquina rock].... The fort is moated round.”
The colony of Pensacola or Santa Maria de Galve, founded by Andres de Pes in 1693, gradually increasing in importance and maintaining an overland connection with St. Augustine, naturally gave rise to intermediate settlements, for which the fertile, wide-spread savannas of Alachua, the rich hammocks along the Suwannee, and the productive limestone soil of Middle Florida offered unrivalled advantages.
The tractable Apalaches and their neighbors received the missionaries with much favor, and it is said that almost all the former were converted;278 a statement which we must confine, however, to that small portion of the confederated tribes included under this title, that lived in Middle Florida. When Colonel Moore invaded their country in 1703-4, he found them living in villages, each having its parish church, subsisting principally by agriculture, and protected by a garrison of Spanish soldiers.279 The open well-cleared character of their country, and the marks of their civilized condition were long recalled in tradition by the later Indians.280 So strong a hold did Catholicism take upon them that more than a century subsequent, when the nation was reduced to an insignificant family on the Bayou Rapide, they still retained its forms, corrupted by admixture with their ancient heliolatry.281
On the Atlantic coast, there were besides St. Augustine the towns of San Matheo, Santa Cruce, San Juan, Santa Maria, and others. The Indians of these missions Dickinson282 describes as scrupulous in their observance of the Catholic rites, industrious and prosperous in their worldly relations, “having plenty of hogs and fowls, and large crops of corn;” and each hamlet presided over by “Fryars,” who gave regular instruction to the native children in school-houses built for the purpose. All these were north of St. Augustine; to the south the savages were more perverse, and in spite of the earnest labors of many pious priests, some of whom fell martyrs to their zeal, they clung tenaciously to heathendom.
Nothing definite is known regarding the settlements on and near the Gulf, but in all probability they were more extensive than those on the eastern shore, peopling the coast and inland plains with a race of civilized and Christian Indians. Cotemporary geographers speak of “the towns of Achalaque, Ossachile, Hirritiqua, Coluna, and some others of less note,”283 as founded and governed by Spaniards, while numerous churches and villages are designated on ancient charts, with whose size and history we are totally unacquainted. Many of these doubtless refer to native hamlets, while the Spanish names affixed to others point to settlements made by that nation. How much the Church of Rome had at heart the extension and well-being of this portion of her domain, may be judged from the fact that she herself bore half the expense of the military kept in the province for its protection.284
Such was the condition of the Spanish missions of Florida at their most flourishing period. Shortly after the commencement of the eighteenth century, foes from the north destroyed and drove out the colonists, demolishing in a few years all that the life, and the blood, and the toil of so many martyrs during two centuries had availed to construct. About the middle of the century we have a tolerably accurate knowledge of the country through English writers; and then so few and insignificant were the Spanish settlements, that only one occurred between St. Marks and St. Augustine, while, besides the latter, the only post on the Atlantic coast was a wretched “hut” on the south bank of the St. Johns at its mouth.285
Undoubtedly it is to the close of the seventeenth century therefore that we must refer those vestiges of an extensive and early inhabitation that occasionally meet our notice in various parts. Sometimes in the depth of forests of apparently primeval growth the traveller has been astonished to find rusting church bells, half buried brass cannon, mouldering walls, and the decaying ruins of once stately edifices. Especially numerous are these in middle Florida, along the old Spanish highway from St. Augustine to Pensacola, on the banks of the St. Johns, and on Amelia island. The Indians informed the younger Bartram286 that near the Suwannee, a few miles above Manatee Spring, the Spaniards formerly had “a rich, well cultivated, and populous settlement, and a strong fortified post, as they likewise had at the savanna and field of Capola,” east of the Suwannee, between it and the Alachua plains; but that these were far inferior to those on the Apalachian Old Fields “where yet remain vast works and buildings, fortifications, temples, &c.” The elder Bartram287 speaks of similar remarkable antiquities on the St. Johns, Bernard Romans288 in various parts of the interior, Williams,289 Brackenridge,290 and others291 in middle Florida, and I may add the numerous Spanish Old Fields which I observed throughout the peninsula, the extensive coquina quarries on Anastasia (St. Estaca, Fish’s) Island, and the deserted plantations on Musquito and Indian river Lagoons, as unequivocal proofs of a much denser population than is usually supposed to have existed in those regions.
The easy conquest these settlements offered to the English and the rapidity with which they melted away were partly owing to the insufficient force kept for their protection. Colonel Daniels, who led the land force of Governor Moore’s army in 1702, and took possession of St. Augustine, apparently met with no noticeable opposition on his march; while we have it on official authority that the year after there were only three hundred and fifty-three soldiers in the whole province of whom forty-five were in Apalache, seven in Timuqua, nineteen in Guale, and the rest in St. Augustine.
The incursion of the English in 1702-1706, and of the Creeks (Alibamons) in 1705, were very destructive to the monastic establishments of the north, and though Juan de Ayala, minister of the interior, devoted himself earnestly to restoring them, his labor was destined to yield small profit. The destruction of Pensacola by Bienville in 1719, the ravages of Colonel Palmer eight years later, the second demolition of the settlements in Apalache, between Tallahassie and St. Marks, by a marauding party of English and Indians in 1736, the inroad of Governor Oglethorpe four years subsequent, and another incursion of the English in 1745—these following in quick succession, it may be readily conceived rendered of no avail the efforts of the Franciscans to re-establish their missions on Floridian soil.
Previous to the cession to England the settlements had become reduced to St. Josephs, Pensacola, and St. Marks on the Gulf, Picolati on the St. Johns, and St. Augustine on the Atlantic. When the English took possession, the latter town numbered nine hundred houses and five thousand seven hundred inhabitants including a garrison of two thousand five hundred men.292 There was a well-built church here as also at Pensacola, while at St. Marks there were two convents, one of Jesuits the other of Franciscans.293 At this time but very few of the Indians, who are described as “bigotted idolators worshipping the sun and moon,” and “noted for a bold, subtile, and deceitful people,”294 seem to have been in the fold of the Catholic Church.
Harassed and worn out as the colony was by long wars, and apparently soon to die a natural death, it is not a matter of wonder that in the tripartite Definitive Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles, February 10th, 1763, Spain was glad to relinquish her right to its soil in consideration of the far superior island of Cuba.295 Though it was stipulated that all who desired to remain should enjoy their property-rights, and religion, very few availed themselves of the privilege, little loth to forsake a country that had been one continued scene of war and tumult for more than half a century.
With this closes the history of the conversion of the Indians as during the English regime they were lost sight of in other issues, and when the Spanish returned to power such a scene of unquiet turmoil and ceaseless wrangling awaited them as effectually to divert their attention from the moral condition of the aboriginal tribes.
