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The Spanish crown allowed controlled sharing of land between Indians and Spaniards

Source: The Menendez Marquez Cattle Barony at La Chua and the Determinants of Economic Expansion in Seventeenth-Century Florida #163

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Indian vassals of the Crown owned in the name of their chief both the lands about their current towns and the "old fields" of their former townsites. These Indian rights were defended by the Franciscan friars, who opposed Spanish settlement near their charges. All the rest of the land, the realengo, belonged to the King, and it was for the free use of the Indians if they wanted it. (Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, November 10, 1657; Governor Zuniga y Cerda Visita, February 7, 1701.) There was a provision for Spanish ranches of a sort. Any creole might ask the governor for grazing rights to an area roughly circular and about eight leagues across in a certain locality. But these estancias, or hatos, were supposed to be no closer than three leagues from any Indian settlement. (Lorenzo Horruytiner, May 6, 1685; Joachin de Florencia Visita of 1694-1695. A land league in Florida was about two and one-half miles or four kilometers.) As Governor Diego de Rebolledo... once remarked, if such rules had been enforced in New Spain, Guatemala, or Yucatan, those regions would never have become productive. (Governor Rebolledo, October 18, 1657.)

The ideal location for large-scale ranching, as far as grasslands were concerned, belonged to the Potano people. It was in the interior of the peninsula, in the lake region, some fifteen leagues west of the St. Johns. There, regular burning off of the scrub for fire hunts and agriculture had created great savannahs, where the wire grass came up in fresh tender shoots after every fire. The natives, however, did not want the Spanish using their land. According to friars who tried to work among them, "The Indians used to kill and exterminate our cattle like vermin, and did the same to the trees and seeds, wishing to leave no trace nor smell of US." (Fr. Pedro Ruiz et al., October 16, 1612).

Conditions for large-scale ranching in north-central Florida would not develop easily. It would first be necessary to have peace with the Indians, empty range grasslands, a reliable transportation network, entrepreneurs with sufficient capital to import stock and allow it time to increase, experienced labor, locations inconvenient to pirates yet accessible to markets, prices high enough to guarantee a profit, and a larger Spanish population than the garrison required. And there had to be a feeling of continuity: the rancher needed to know that the King would defend his province, and that he could keep his land. Apparently these conditions did not come into conjuncture before the 1630s or 1640s, and then only briefly.