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Jonathan Dickinson described the warm welcome and poverty in SA and its mission towns

Source: Situado and Sabana #82

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Somehow, the governors of Florida and South Carolina were able to disassociate themselves from the Chacato War that had threatened to engulf the northern border and to repair the strained relations between their two colonies. Among the beneficiaries of this detente were 24 English and African castaways who in the winter of 1696 survived the wreck of the barkentine Reformation off Jupiter Island, rough treatment from Indian salvors, and a freezing journey up the coast, to find a charitable welcome in St. Augustine and be delivered at last into the hands of their co-religionists in Charles Town.

Quaker merchant Jonathan Dickinson published an account of this odyssey, called God's Protecting Providence (Dickinson, 1699), which reveals much about the state of the colony in the mid-1690s. AN253 In St. Augustine, Dickinson, his wife and baby, and shipmaster Joseph Kirle were houseguests of Governor Torres and his wife, who brought them warm clothes, Spanish wine and hot chocolate AN254 (a welcome change from the "cassena" tea that soldiers and Indians drank), and a doctor. The governor's "kindness to us all was extraordinary," Dickinson recalled, "and we eat no worse than he did daily," a diet of "hominy, herbs and pumpions."

"The governor stated the poverty of the country unto us. The place is a garrison maintained one half by the King of Spain, the other half by the Church of Rome. The male inhabitants are all soldiers. . . . And all their supply of bread, clothing and money comes from the Havana and Porto Vella. And it is going on of three years since they have had a vessel from any place whatsoever, which makes their wants very great: all things being expended except ammunition and salt, of which they said they had enough" (Dickinson 1699).

Torres accepted Dickinson's and Kirle's signed notes against the governor of South Carolina in order to permit the castaways to make purchases and outfit their party as best they could for the second half of their wintry journey. The city, it seemed, was suffering from compounded shortages. Clothing and cloth were unavailable at any price; all that the shoppers could find for warmth were a few skins and 7 blankets. To feed themselves along the way, they purchased 5 roves (arrobas) of ammunition for their Indian hunters, plus some water jars and earthen cooking pots. Other than some weevily wheat bread, 20 roves of strung beef, and 1 rove of salt, St. Augustine had no food to spare, but the governor arranged for the Englishmen to pick up 60 arrobas of Indian corn and 10 of "peas" in one of the border towns. AN255

Dickinson's journal is a welcome source of information on the Christian towns above St. Augustine. Travelling north under escort, the English party stopped in turn at "Santa Cruce," "St. Wans," "St. Mary's," which Dickinson called "a frontier and a garrison town," and "St. Phillips." They saw "worshipping houses" with bells, where the Indians went "as constantly to their devotion at all times and seasons as any of the Spaniards" and the boys "were kept to school, . . . The friar being their schoolmaster."

Each town had a "war-house . . . For their times of mirth and dancing, and to lodge and entertain strangers." The structures were large, clean, and circular, measuring in diameter from 50 feet at Santa Cruz to 81 feet at Santa Maria. They had from 16 to 32 squares built around the walls, each one containing a "cabin" and a place for a fire. The cabins at Santa Maria were "about 8 foot long of a good height being painted and well matted." "Night being come and the time of their devotion over, the friar," who "some years past was at Charles Town in South Carolina, came in and many of the Indians both men and women" danced "according to their way and custom" around a "great fire" built under a 20-foot quadrangle left open to the sky. Simon de Salas, it seems, did not forbid latenight dances. [Note: A year later, Salas was stationed at Tupiqui and the doctrinero at Santa Maria was Fray Diego Bravo (Menendez Marquez and Florencia, 1697).]

As might have been expected, the cloth shortage in St. Augustine extended to the provinces. At Santa Maria, Dickinson saw women wearing "gowns and petticoats" made from "the moss of trees"-the same fiber, fabric, and function that John Hawkins had observed near the same spot over 130 years earlier (Hawkins, 1564: 113). To Dickinson, the natives seemed "very industrious, having plenty of hogs and fowls and large crops of corn, as we could tell by their corn-houses." The maize and beans that he and Kirle had arranged for in St. Augustine they picked up at Santa Maria, where they also "got of the Indians plenty of garlic and long pepper to season our corn and peas, both which were griping and windy," and provided themselves with wooden trays and spoons and ropes made of platted rushes.

The English were relieved to learn that the "Carolina Indians called the Yammasees, which are related to these Indians[,] were here about a month since trading for deerskins." It showed that the coastal Indians to the north would not be hostile, like those to the south. It also showed that the Christian Guales were on friendly terms with the Yamasee defectors and through them participated in Charles Town's growing deerskin trade, and that the Spanish were aware of the connection and countenanced it.

Preparations complete, the English castaways set out in state in seven "large canoes," with an armed escort of 7 Spaniards and 2 caciques and some 30 Indians "from all the towns" to be their rowers, hunters, and pilots-evidence that the labor draft was yet functioning. On the way they saw plenty of hogs and deer but only a few hunters, among them "a canoe of Carolina Indians being a man his wife and children having his dogs and other hunting implements for to lie out this winter season." Dickinson was surprised to see signs of once thriving settlements that were now wastelands without shelter or firewood. One of these was ''the place called St. Catalena, where hath been a great settlement of lndians, for the land hath been cleared for planting, for some miles distant" (Dickinson, 1699).

(Bushnell SS)