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Menendez made friends with old Chief Guale and named was applied to the whole coast

Source: The Debatable Land #557

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"Pious cutthroat," Parkman has called Menendez. But he was more than that. He was a constructive colonizer as well as a hardfisted soldier. He did not stop with wordy plans; he executed. Within a year he had a fine of posts and settlements all the way round the coast from Tampa Bay to Santa Elena (Port Royal). [para.] It was in April, 1566, that the great Adelantado made his first visit to the northern Georgia coast. The chief of Santa Catalina (St. Catherines) Island, where Menendez landed, was an old man called Guale. From this circumstance the name Guale was specifically applied to the island; but it was gradually extended down the entire Georgia coast islands and mainland from Santa Elena to the St. Johns. Landing with fifty men, the Adelantado made friends with old chief Guale, and soon had him sitting on the beach eating biscuits "with gusto." When he departed Menendez left his nephew and another Spaniard as hostages. On his way back from Santa Elena in August he made another stop of eight days in Guale, and left there a garrison of thirty men. This post on St. Catherines was the first of a chain of Spanish settlements on the Georgia seaboard; its founding in 1566 was the beginning of more than a century's continuous occupation.1