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Florida's first period was the era of Adelantamiento
Source: Situado and Sabana #82
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PERIODIZATION From the founding of St. Augustine in 1565 to the colony's transfer to the British in 1764, Spanish Florida history falls into five overlapping time periods: the eras of the Adelantamiento, the Nearer Pacifications, the Farther Pacifications, the Building of the Castillo, and the Walled City. Each period had its own assemblage of problems and policies. The Adelantamiento was a form of proprietary government; it recalled the medieval lordships of the marches and resembled the donatary captaincies in Brazil. Philip II's purpose in appointing a new adelantado for Florida in 1565 was to enforce Spain's claim to a stretch of the Atlantic coast which France had lately challenged with a fort and a fortified settlement. His chosen champion was an Asturian seafarer, don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who promised to clear the coast of interlopers, establish three towns, and introduce missionaries. In return, Menendez would receive a heritable title; governorship of the colony for two lifetimes; certain privileges of lordship, lands, and patronage; and certain exceptions from the regulations of the House of Trade. All these provisions were carefully spelled out in a renewable three-year contract. Menendez was a man of means and connections, but all of the resources he could command proved insufficient to the task. As military intelligence supplied details about the escalation of French forces, the king himself became a partner in the enterprise, investing during the period of the contract some 200,000 ducats, two and two-thirds' times the 75,000-ducat combined investment of the Menendez comuno of family and business associates. During the Adelantamiento, conversion came in a poor third behind the Adelantado's priorities of preserving his military gains and restoring the comuno's fortunes. Menendez concluded military and trading alliances with several chiefdoms, sealing them Indian-fashion by the exchange of gifts and hostages. AN11 As promised, he introduced Jesuits, distributing them among the garrisons he had stationed at every deep water port around the peninsula, but these would-be missionaries soon saw that their labor would be fruitless as long as Spanish soldiers were compelled by hunger to raid the native storehouses. AN12 Unwilling to give up their missionary calling to serve as military chaplains, some of the Jesuits left to found a mission in Virginia, where members of the Powhatan confederacy killed them. The other Jesuits withdrew. Menendez's three small settlements-St. Augustine, San Mateo, and his capital, Santa Elena, in present South Carolina -were plagued by famine, mutinies, and Indian hostility, as his lieutenant governors attempted to progress from gifts and trade to tribute and services. Two of the three settlements fell by the way. First, the French corsair Dominique de Gourgues destroyed the fort at San Mateo with the help of eastern Timucuans. Then, after Sir Francis Drake assaulted the fort at St. Augustine and the Indians of the vicinity readily sacked the city, the Spanish abandoned, not St. Augustine, but Santa Elena, to concentrate their efforts farther south. (Bushnell SS)
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