The governor was responsible for the three Indian provinces of Guale, Timucua, and Apalache. By 1700 the few Indians remaining under Spanish control in Guale lived on the coastal islands just north of the mouth of the Saint John’s River. Most Gualean activity centered at the mission of San Felipe on Cumberland Island. Timucua included villages near Saint Augustine and those lying to the west on the Apalache trail. The largest of the three provinces, Apalache, included villages in and around present-day Tallahassee and those lying to the north on the banks of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Other Indian provinces included Ais and Carlos in the Southern half of the Florida peninsula, but they received more attention from Cubans than from the governor and his friars in Saint Augustine. AN263 Governor Zuniga and Spanish Indian Policy In general the Spaniards pursued a benevolent, altruistic Indian policy in Florida. The colony had no encomiendas, mines, or textile workshops (obrajes) in which natives might be exploited by Spanish taskmasters, and the Florida Indians were saved from the evils usually accompanying such enterprises in other parts of the Spanish Empire. Occasionally the governor called upon the Indians to labor on the fortifications at Saint Augustine, but usually he used white forced laborers or Negro slaves for such tasks. On the frontier the friars labored to consolidate scattered tribes into villages, to teach the Indians the methods of sedentary agriculture, and to convert them to Christianity. Rather than using force or coercion, the Franciscans bound the Indians to them by exemplary personal conduct, gifts, instruction in farming, and promises of eternal life. (Tepaske GSF)