1678.]

THE SPANIARDS AND THE ENGLISH.

557

Slow growth

ony.

preached to the natives with success in their own language. In 1638, a war broke out between the colony and the Apalachee Indians. Such Indians as were captured were reduced to slavery; the tribe was so far overcome as to be kept for the time of the colwithin its own limits. Meanwhile the growth of the colony was so small, that in 1647, eighty-two years after Menendez founded the colony, the number of families in St. Augustine was but three hundred, and this was almost the whole of the settlement. There were also fifty Franciscan friars domiciled in the city. When it is remembered that Menendez took with him two thousand six hundred and fifty colonists from Cadiz, it will be seen that the history of Florida, thus far, had been a history of decline and not of progress.

So Spanish and

claims.

With the colonists of Virginia and other northern colonies the Spaniards had little intercourse, peaceful or otherwise. soon as Charles II. gave a charter for the settlement of English Carolina, which was in 1663, jealousies arose on both sides, and the hatred of Englishmen for Spaniard, and Catholic for heretic, was enough to keep the little colonies suspicious of each other, even when nominal peace united their sovereigns at home. In 1665 an expedition under Captain John Davis, a buccaneer, made a descent on St. Augustine and ravaged the town. In 1667, however, Charles II. of England concluded a treaty with Spain, in which Spain conceded to England all colonies which Charles and his subjects "then possessed." On the other hand, Charles agreed to cut off all future protection from the buccaneers, who, till this time, had considered Spanish property to be fair prize if found in the Pacific, and were not distressed if they seized it in the other great ocean. No English settlement was in fact made in Carolina, under Charles's charter, until 1670. But, in the diplomacy of the two nations, it was virtually agreed that the English claim to that region was good, and the line of the St. Mary's River was eventually agreed on as the line of the separation between the English and Spanish dominions. It is therefore, to this day, the dividing line between the State of Georgia, which bears an English name, and that of Florida, which retains the Spanish name given it by Ponce de Leon.2

The Spaniards, on their side, attacked the English colonies in 1670 and 1686, but without other success than burning and ravaging the homes of a few settlers on the coast. Such raids, of course, kept up the feeling of mutual hatred, strong enough at the very best. But

1 Each king was Charles II. Charles II. of England reigned from 1660 to 1685. Charles II. of Spain reigned from 1665 to 1700.

2 See vol. i., p. 147.

for the rest of the seventeenth century, there was no exploit on either side which deserves the name of war.

Menendez had been authorized, at the very beginning of the colony, to introduce five hundred negro slaves. So many laboring men pressed themselves upon him in Spain, that he made no use of the concession. But in 1687 one hundred negroes were introduced as slaves, and for nearly two centuries Florida suffered under the disadvantage of slave labor. Cabrera, who was governor in 1681, undertook the enterprise of removing the Indians not Christianized to the islands of the coast. The result was simply an insurrection of these tribes, who took refuge within the limits of Carolina. In a subsequent incursion, these Indians attacked the Tomoquas, a Christian

tribe, friendly to the Spaniards, whose name is still preserved in the Tomoka River. They killed a large number of the Tomoquas, and carried the other prisoners to the colony of St. Helena, where their Christianity did not protect them so far but that they were reduced into slavery.

The settlement of Pensacola.

Meanwhile, on the western coast of the peninsula of Florida, the Spanish government established a fort at Pensacola, in the year 1696. The name of the place, spelled by them Pençacola, is that of a tribe of Indians who once resided there. The Spaniards were stimulated by the efforts of the French to settle at the mouth of the Mississippi, and, indeed, had only just founded Pensacola when the French colony under D'Iberville arrived. A square fort, known by the name of Charles, the king of Spain, a church, and other public buildings, were erected. Andres d'Arriola was the first governor. Within two years D'Iberville touched at the new post, nor was it long before his brother was attacking it, in the War of the Succession. Before that time, however, new opportunities

1700.]

WAR WITH CAROLINA.

559

for carnage and ravage had been found by English and Spaniards on the eastern shore.

English expedition to

St. Augus

Near the close of the year 1700, on the death of Governor Blake of Carolina, James Moore had been chosen as his successor. With the poor object of personal gain from the traffic in Indian slaves, he granted commissions for the capture of Indians with power to sell them as slaves; and, on the outbreak in Europe of the war with Spain, he undertook an expedition against St. Augustine with the same object in view. He embarked with this purpose in September, 1702, having arranged that Daniel, an officer of spirit, should make a descent upon the town by land, while Moore himself blockaded the harbor by sea. The Spaniards, under their governor Cuniga, had heard of the movement, and retired with tine. their effects into their castle. When Moore arrived, he found his guns too weak to assault them, and sent Daniel to Jamaica for heavy artillery. While Daniel was absent, two Spanish ships, one of twenty-two guns and one of eighteen, appeared off the harbor, and so terrified the English that they raised the siege. Moore retired by land to Charleston, without losing a man, burning the town of St. Augustine and his own transports. Daniel, on his return with the mortars and guns for which he had been sent, hardly escaped capture.

taliation.

The Spaniards retaliated for this foolish assault in exciting the Apalachee Indians, their allies, to attack the English set- Spanish Retlements. The Apalachees marched, nine hundred in number, but fell into an ambush of the Creeks, who were always the firm allies of the English, and were routed by them. In reward for this service, all who survived of the Indians who had been held as slaves in St. Augustine and those who had been taken since 1640, were now set free by Cuniga, under a promise that they should return to work on the fortifications whenever they were needed. Cuniga urged the government at home to send him the means to make five new posts on his frontiers. Before any such aid reached him, Moore, with a thousand Creeks and about fifty of the Carolina militia, attacked the Indian allies of the Spaniards and defeated them. He carried away three hundred slaves, most of the people of seven Indian towns.1 He burned San Luis and Ayaralla, and took the church plate and vestments, and everything else of value. These Indians had, before this time, made some progress in civilization—it was, perhaps, the loosening of the habits of savage life which made them so easy a prey to the untamed savages who attacked them. This incursion was followed by others, frequent enough to forbid the 1 South Carolina Report in Carroll's Collections, ii. 353.

recolonization of the wasted country before the end of the war. So enraged were the Indians that the Carolinians were obliged to put up forts for their frontier defence, one of which was established at Apalachicola, close to the limits of the State of Florida. The Yemassees, who had been driven out from Carolina into Florida, kept up an unremitted warfare on the frontiers.

Capture and

So soon as Bienville, Governor of Louisiana, learned in 1719, that war existed between Spain and France, he took Pensacola by recapture of surprise. The Spaniards retook it at once, in the same Pensacola. way. But, in September of the same year, Bienville took it again. This time the French commander destroyed the fortifications and the town, leaving only a small battery and a handful of men. In 1722, the Spaniards reoccupied the harbor, and built a town on Santa Rosa island, near where Fort Pickens now stands. But the settlement was gradually transferred to the northern side of the bay, where the present city of Pensacola stands; the point taken on the island having proved particularly sandy and barren.

Hostilities between

In 1732, Oglethorpe's settlement of Georgia pressed even closer than Carolina had done on the frontiers of Florida. Oglethorpe claimed that the Altamaha was the southern boundary of his Georgia and province. The English fort, King George, erected on the Florida. banks of that river, had already given umbrage to the Spaniards, and in 1736, the Spanish government ordered Oglethorpe to evacuate all territory south of St. Helena Sound. The Governor brought three companies of foot with him to Frederica, the most northerly Spanish settlement, the place still known by the same name on the sea-coast of Georgia. Oglethorpe went at once to England for aid. At that moment the people of England were indignant with Spain for other reasons, and Oglethorpe returned, with the commission of major-general, and a regiment of men. The Spaniards strengthened St. Augustine in their turn. In October, Walpole's pacific policy was abandoned, war was declared, and the English sent a squadron under Admiral Vernon to the West Indies, with directions to aid Oglethorpe, who at once set on foot operations against St. Augustine. He succeeded in cementing the alliance between the English and the Creeks, who hated the Spaniards with a very perfect hatred.

The officers of the navy having agreed to coöperate in the attack on St. Augustine, Oglethorpe appointed a rendezvous on the Florida side of the St. John's River and moved on the 9th of May, 1740, with

The point was farther up

1 This is not at the site of the present town of Apalachicola. the river of that name, not far from Chattahoochee. The fort known as Savanas was still farther up, and must not be confounded with the site of Savannah.

1740.]

WAR WITH GEORGIA.

561

four hundred whites and a large party of Indians. The next day he invested a Spanish outpost called Diego, belonging to a Spaniard, named Spinosa, reduced and garrisoned it. He then returned to his rendezvous, and with his whole command-two thousand men, regular troops, provincials, and Indians, moved against Fort Moosa, two miles from St. Augustine. The Spaniards abandoned this post and retired into the town, which he had given them time to provision by driving in cattle, while he was occupied with Fort Diego and his counter-marches. He was compelled to blockade the harbor and invest the town. He left

Oglethorpe's Attack on St. Augustine (from "An Impartial Account of the Late Expedition to St. Augustine." London, 1742).1

ninety-five Highlanders and forty-two Indians at Moosa, to intercept all supplies of cattle for the town. This was all the force he left on the land side. He sent Colonel Vanderdussen, with the Carolina regiment, to take Point Quartelle on the water side, about a mile distant from the castle, and build a battery. With his own regiment and most of the Indians he landed on the island of Anastasia. One of the ships was stationed to the southward to block up the Matanzas passage, and the others blockaded the harbor. Batteries were erected on Anastasia.

Having made these dispositions, Oglethorpe summoned the Spanish

1 KEY TO THE MAP.-1. The Town. 2. The Castle. 3. A Battery. 4. Moosa or Negro Fort. 5. The Lookout. 6. Small Fort abandoned by the Spaniards. 7. A Battery of one mortar, and three six-pounders. 8. A Battery, one mortar, two eighteen-pounders, and one nine-pounder. 9 Six half galleys at anchor (Spanish). 10. A Battery, two mortars, four eighteen-pounders, and one nine-pounder. 11. Harbor "where our vessels lay." 12. Carolina Regiments, first Camp on Pt. Quartelle. 13. Sailor's Camp. 14. Carolina Regiments, Second Camp on Pt. Quartelle. 15. Carolina Camp upon Anastasia. 16. The Volunteers' Camp. 17 Gen. Oglethorpe's Camp after he went from Anastasia.