(Worth SGC) THE RETREAT OF GUALE AND MOCAMA IN RETROSPECT The 1685 regrouping of Guale and Mocama along the northern coast of present-day Florida represented the culmination of a struggle that had lasted nearly a quarter of a century. What began with the first Chichimeco assault in the summer of 1661 had concluded with the disastrous pirate raid of the fall of 1684. The effective result was the depopulation of the Georgia coast, leaving old Guale and Mocama a virtually uninhabited borderland between the Spanish and the English. Once a functioning part of the colonial system of Spanish Florida, the northern mission provinces gradually retreated seaward and southward, ultimately forming a huddled cluster of villages under constant Spanish protection. Over the course of only 23 years, Guale and Mocama had shrunk from some 10 mission towns distributed across more than 40 leagues of coastline to only 5 towns within the district of 8 leagues. Only one mission, San Juan del Puerto, remained in its original location throughout this turbulent period.