Update this timeline entry

The Florida governor and friars submitted their dispute to the Crown

Source: Situado and Sabana #82

Project ID

Chapter

Timeline title

Start date

End date

Filename received

Filename assigned

Content

The message arrived at the Convent of the Immaculate Conception on the eve of the Franciscans' triennial chapter meeting. Delegates had come from every corner of Christian Florida, and the main items on their agenda were Governor Juan Marquez Cabrera's misdeeds and misgovernment. For nearly a month, the friars and the governor bombarded one another in writing before they gathered up their papers and forwarded them to a higher authority. Only the Crown could resolve the dispute in the ranks of Spaniards over Indian labor and Indian corn.

In Marquez Cabrera's opinion, the missionaries had taken on too much authority. He, not they, was responsible to the king for the good order and productivity of the provinces. He had therefore put into execution three reforms. First, he had given orders that the friars should no longer punish the Indians for concubinage, missing Mass, or any other offense, for all punishments and sentences should come under the royal justice. Second, he had asked his tenientes to work with the caciques to "lay out and work and make" the fields, "including a milpa for the doctrinero or priest who ministers to them," large enough "for two servants, who [were] plenty enough to fence and cultivate the huertas for his service," unless in his convent corral the friar was raising pigs and chickens for the Havana provisioning trade. Third, with regard to the gifts the friars were accustomed to receive from the Indians, he had declared that no duress of any kind could be used to extort a freewill offering. Alms were by definition voluntary (Marquez Cabrera, 168lc). AN209

The Franciscans took the position that the governor was an ill-informed, impulsive newcomer who did not understand the local situation and had no respect for tradition. "Innovation in government causes disturbance and deterioration in long-established political practices, especially ones that have been tried and found to be good and convenient," they pointed out. AN210 They addressed Marquez Cabrera's supposed reforms one by one.

Yes, as spiritual fathers they were compelled to administer corporal punishment to their neophytes, who were "new plants" and "babes with the milk of doctrine on their lips." Regrettably, an Indian was "a child of the fear of four lashes."

Yes, they supervised native agriculture. That also was out of necessity, for such was the "uselessness, weakness and natural indolence" of the natives that they had to be exhorted constantly to the growing of maize, "their only grain and staple," or else "they would not have been conserved to live rationally and socially in settlements" but would still be living in their old manner, "like wild animals of the forest." If the governor thought otherwise, he did not know "what an Indian was," much less "an Indian of Florida," nor appreciate the extent of their "idleness, weakness, and lack of concern for the common weal." Florida Indians would not on their own lay in an adequate store of grain, being "content with little," because "for something of this world that is likely to cost them some trouble they do not much kill themselves." As a result, they often ran short of maize and had to "go into the woods to maintain themselves with plants and roots," acorns and palm berries, and it was "their natural inclination to think that a good life" (Franciscans, 168la). The Franciscans themselves had taken vows of poverty, but they were not peasants, obligated by their station in life to support the rest of society.

And yes, the friars accepted alms of food from the Indians, "who when they take a notion come to the aid of the religiosos their teachers and of the soldiers who live among them with a little venison from the deer they hunt in the woods and a bit of fish from the lagoons." They wondered what the governor's object could have been in notifying the caciques and principales that "in time of cavas they should not give to any person of whatever rank any meat or fish for his sustenance, nor let the Indians be so occupied." Being forced to do without the services of hunters and fishermen during planting season, they said, would leave them "without their natural food six months of the  year."

Respecting their supposed misuse of convent corrals and their involvement in trade, they asked:
"Is it a sin, or is it honorable and a good example for the religious to have his house or convent enclosed with some stakes or poles? Is it a sin or sacrilege to have a few vegetables planted in a corral? If this is evil and abominable, as Your Grace thinks, then the same can be said for [their] having two dozen hens and two or three hogs, with which they barter for the . . . Things they have need of in their convents, such as two or three bottles of wine, some [bottles] of sugar syrup, a little sugar, and wax for the churches-things that an indio neither buys nor has any use for (Franciscans, 1681a).

Captain Joachin de Florencia came forward to testify on their behalf. Speaking from seven years' experience as a syndic, he swore that personal gain could not be the friars' motive for engaging in trade. They did not charge parish fees nor receive emoluments; on the contrary, they spent their own stipends to care for the sick and fatherless. If they traded, it was in order to buy tools for the Indians and vestments for the churches, without having to appeal to the Crown. As they explained:

"It would be a great new expense to the royal treasury if it had to conserve the churches and doctrinas of these conversiones with the lustre and decency they now have, and the abundance of ornaments and other things for divine worship that there are in these churches and sacristies" (Franciscans, 1681c).

Thanks to their trade and self-denial, the Indians' labor, and the alms of benefactors in Havana and elsewhere, the doctrinas had "many good things of all kinds, and all without expense to the king." To prove their point, the Franciscans appended a list of the sacred vessels, vestments, altar furnishings, images, paintings, and other items of value in their 34 doctrinas (Franciscans, 1681).

On the defensive, the governor acknowledged to the king that his course of action was disruptive- "It is clear, Sire, that a desire to amend and remedy an ancient and deeply rooted evil custom must cost some annoyance" (Marquez Cabrera, 1681c)-yet he still believed that a surgical solution was required. Instead of backing down, the governor found one thing more to regulate: the service of the convent. On the basis of a general cedula dated November 7, 1680, he forbade the Franciscans to use the labor of Indians without paying them. As the doctrineros well knew, requiring them to pay the modest jornal of one real a day to the natives in their service would incorporate those natives into the ranks of repartimiento workers and be the means by which the governor could establish control over the supply of labor to the convents. This innovation, he admitted, caused a general sentiment against him among the religiosos. He asked for an episcopal visit to bring them into line (Marquez Cabrera, 1682a). With that, each side sat back to wait for the Crown to discipline the other.

By then the fiscal of the Consejo de Indias was reading the first act of a genuinely cereal drama. In one of the letters that the Franciscans had sent to the Crown, Pedro de Luna wrote that by forbidding the ministers to correct the Indians, the governor was interfering with a 100-year-old custom. It was clear to Luna that instead of letting the sabanas continue to be administered by the religiosos and their produce used to beautify Florida's churches, of which there were more than 80, Governor Marquez Cabrera planned to use the tenientes and soldiers of the secondary garrisons to bring the sabanas under the supervision of the presidio and use the produce partly to support the soldiers and partly to provide a safety net of provisions for St. Augustine. Obviously, said Father Luna, the governor did not realize that the friars employed the convent sabanas to accumulate a famine reserve, preserve the seedcorn, and keep the Indians from having to go to the woods to find roots, defaulting on their Christian obligation to be in church on certain days (Luna 1682?).

The fiscal made a note on Luna's letter: Let the Consejo thank the governor for visiting Apalache and ask him to treat the religiosos with respect. Privately, the members of the Consejo asked the governor of Havana to inform them in confidence about his colleague (Ponce de Leon, 1683).

(Bushnell SS)