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Montiano's document #11: THE SPANISH INVASION OF CAROLINA, 1686-Worth's framework
Source: The Struggle for the Georgia Coast #129
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(Worth SGC) DOCUMENT 11: THE SPANISH INVASION OF CAROLINA, 1686 INTRODUCTION In August of 1686, Governor Don Juan Marquez Cabrera sponsored a retaliatory strike against the English colony of Carolina, venturing to within 10 leagues of Charles Town itself in an attempt to rid the northern coast of enemy presence (see Hortelano, 1686; Juan, 1686; Moore et al., 1686; Marquez Cabrera, 1687; Quiroga y Losada, 1687; Torre, 1687; Barios, 1688; Dunlop, 1688; Penate, 1688; San Payo 1688; Crane, 1956; Bushnell, 1994; and below). The raid followed three years of nearly constant English supported assaults on Spanish Florida, including the Grammont pirate raid of 1683, the Jingle pirate raid of 1684, the Yamassee invasion of Timucua in 1685, and yet another pirate raid by Grammont in 1686. Furthermore, the Scottish colony of Stuart's Town, illegally established in late 1684 on Santa Elena Island within Spanish territory, had remained a constant source of irritation for Governor Marquez Cabrera over the past year and a half, and the expedition was specifically directed to extirpate the invaders from their island home. In response to a direct request for aid by Governor Marquez Cabrera, the Governor of Havana dispatched two galliots,(1) NOTE 1. The galeota, or galliot, was a small, oared vessel with a single sail which, due primarily to its speed and maneuverability, was frequently used by corsairs (and here by those who chased them). Galliots typically possessed some 17 oars, each manned by a single sailor. On this occasion, Captain Leon led his own galliot, one loaned from Havana under the command of Pedro Hortelano, and a galliot taken from the pirate Grammont by the Floridians, commanded by Joseph Juan (see below). including El Rosario, led by Captain Alejandro Thomas de Leon, an experienced pirate hunter in the coastal guard of the Indies, and another, Nuestra Senora de Regla, based in Havana under the command of Pedro Hortelano. In St. Augustine, these two vessels were outfitted for the expedition and joined by a third galliot that had been taken from the pirate Grammont during his last raid. Manned by volunteers without official posts in Florida (including at least one slave), the presidio's galliot was sent north under Leon's overall command on a mission to push the Carolina frontier back within its legal bounds.(2) NOTE 2. An incomplete list of the members of the Leon expedition (based on the testimony that follows) includes the following individuals: -Galliot 1, El Rosario (of the coastal guards, sent from Havana) Captain Alejandro Thomas de Leon (expedition leader) Lieutenant Joseph Juan Sergeant Sebastian de Cojimar, age 36 Diego Ruiz, age 30 Bartholome Rodriguez, age 25 Juan Clar, age 27 -Galliot 2, Nuestra Seniora de Regla (from Havana) Pedro Hortelano, age 37 (galliot leader, Leon's lieutenant) Alejandro Jorje, age 38 (Hortelano's lieutenant) -Galliot 3 (captured from Grammont, based in St. Augustine) Thomas de la Torre (?) Stopping by the newly aggregated refugee towns of the former Guale and Mocama provinces on modern Amelia Island during early August, Leon convinced a number of Guale Indians to join the expedition, promising them that "whatever they might be able to take in pillage would be theirs" beyond the profits from any silver or black slaves, to be divided evenly among the members of the expedition (Agustin et al.,1686). Arriving on August 17 to find Stuart's Town freshly deserted, the expedition captured a hapless Scottish boy before putting the settlement to the torch, and pushed northward three days later in pursuit of the fleeing colonists. Now navigating within the recognized bounds of Carolina, Leon's three galliots made landfall again on Edisto Island before August 24, plundering several English plantations, including those of Governor Joseph Morton and his secretary Paul Grimball. Capturing 2 young indentured servants and 11 black slaves, the Spanish corsairs proceeded to sack the plantations, carrying off silver and other goods, including the spoils of recent English raids on Campeche and the Timucuan mission of Santa Catalina. Following its early success, the Leon raid was destined for disaster, for on August 26, the unexpected arrival of a hurricane with unfortunate timing nearly destroyed the tiny fleet. El Rosario, the flagship (capitana), was caught in a wave that lifted it from the water, wrecking the galliot on land in a muddy swamp. Among the dead was Captain Leon himself, along with the imprisoned brother-in-law of Governor Morton. Two of Leon's crew-a mulatto slave owned by Captain Antonio de Arguelles and an Indian named Pedro-took advantage of the confusion and fled on foot toward the north, eventually providing intelligence reports to advancing English forces. After removing several weapons and a chest with Leon's personal papers, Pedro Hortelano set fire to the ruined galliot. After cutting new masts for the remaining two vessels, the corsairs abandoned their Guale Indian companions on shore and limped back toward St. Augustine. In yet another example of remarkable timing, four of these Indians and an escaped Guale Indian from Charles Town stumbled across the path of a party of Carolina traders returning from the deep interior province of Apalachicola. Initially imprisoned by the Englishmen, the Guale Indians freed themelves and killed their captors to a man, commandeering their boat loaded with pelts and guns to join up with the corsairs on Amelia Island. Seizing the Indians' prize upon their return to Guale and burning their captured boat, Leon's lieutenant led the two remaining galliots to St. Augustine, initiating a formal visitation of the returning vessels and the interrogation of their prisoners. This documentation follows, preceded by a preliminary auto that predated the expedition itself. Interestingly, there is currently no evidence that a copy of the following document was forwarded to Spain. The contents of the testimony from the three prisoners was indeed damning for the Carolina colony, effectively proving their complicity in pirate raids that had been officially outlawed by the English government. Nevertheless, the evidence contained in the following documents was obtained in an unauthorized and illegal extension of the original plan by Governor Marquez Cabrera, and thus was effectively useless as a major diplomatic bargaining tool. The details of the raid and the controversy that initially followed the return of the galliots are revealed in the text below, with numerous explanatory notes. Text from related Spanish and English accounts is provided in order to supplement the accounts translated in full here. Unlike other documents in this volume, however, these translations are followed by a postscript in order to trace some of the related events that immediately followed (as these events are only touched upon in the Overview). DOCUMENT 11: THE SPANISH INVASION OF CAROLINA, 1686 Florida, Number 11(3) NOTE 3. Beyond this filing note written by 18th-century notary Castilla, the rest of this page was drafted as the cover sheet for the documents that follow, as such indicating the subject of the autos and listing the governor and his notary Solana. Year of 1686 Autos made about the entrance into the port of the galliots, of which Captain Alexandro Thomas de Leon, deceased, was leader, and the expulsion of the inhabitants of Santa Elena, of the English nation. By the senor Captain and Sergeant Major Don Juan Marquez Cabrera, Governor and Captain General of this city and presidio of Florida and its provinces for His Majesty. Notary Adjutant Alonso Solana Auto: Cabrera ordered officials to outfit a galliot... Auto: Cabrera ordered investigation of Leon's shipwreck... Visitation of the Galliots... Auto Cabrera ordered declarations from English captives... Declaration of Juan Clar... Notification, Acceptance, and Oath... Declaration of Catalina, English... Declaration of Juan, Scottish... Notification, Acceptance, and Oath... Declaration of Matheo... Accord... Notification... [Declaration of] Cojimar... [Declaration of] Alejandro Jorje... [Declaration of Diego Ruiz]... [Declaration of Bartholome Rodriguez]... I left a copy of these autos written on fifty-eight pages. Florida, August sixth, seventeen thirty-nine. Castilla(81) NOTE 81. Castilla squeezed this final note in on the margins of the last page of Document 11. The abrupt ending of this testimony, without any final summary or wrap-up, suggests that one or more last pages may have been omitted by Castilla when he removed the original, although their contents were probably of little historical interest. Postscript Following the disputed seizure of the slaves and other booty by Governor Marquez, Pedro Hortelano refitted the galliot Nuestra Senora de Regla for its return to Havana. In a letter to the King the following year, the governor remarked bitterly that after returning from the Leon expedition, "the [galliot] from Havana was careened and outfitted in order to return to that city, because its leader, outside of not being a person in whom one can trust any duty, insisted upon returning, as he did" (Marquez Cabrera, 1686). Despite the loss of two of the three galliots, in a subsequent plan devised by Governor Marquez Cabrera and the royal officials on September 30, the remaining galliot from St. Augustine along with two war piraguas made for the occasion was armed, and 18 men from Leon's wrecked galliot were enlisted for six months of paid duty in Rorida (Marquez Cabrera, 1686; 1688a).(82) NOTE 82. In the residencia of Governor Marquez Cabrera, the 1073 pesos and 5 reales paid to these 18 men were imposed as a debt on the governor himself (Marquez Cabrera, 1688) The free pardos and morenos (those of mixed African descent) in St. Augustine, along with several Indians and a few Spanish soldiers, were to comprise the rest of the expedition (Marquez Cabrera, 1686). The corsairs remained inactive for three months, but in December they were finally dispatched northward on a second raid (Marquez Cabrera, 1688a). In October the governor wrote to the King of his plans to recruit for this expedition some 200 Apalachee Indians armed with firearms, along with 100 from Timucua, in order to make a land assault in concert with that from the sea. Later evidence indicates that this dual attack was indeed carried out, as accounts of expenses to Indians during 1687 include a reference to thousands of pounds of corn and some 1650 pounds of salted beef (taken from Captain Joachin de Florencias cattle ranch in Apalachee) given to "three hundred fifty Timucua and Apalachee Indians who descended from the provinces of Timucua and Apalachee by order and command of the said Governor Don Juan Marquez Cabrera in order to go in the galliots and piraguas with Captain Francisco de Fuentes to the province of Santa Elena... .and in order to return to their lands" (Reyes, 1687).(83) NOTE 83. The exact quantity of corn is not readable on the microfilm copy of this document from Governor Marquez Cabrera's residencia, but it was either 150 or 250 (more likely the latter) arrobas (25 pounds each) of corn drawn from a total of 300 arrobas taken on the trip. The supplies were given to the force of 350 Indians in the village of Santa Maria (at that time on Amelia Island) by Captain Francisco de la Rocha (Reyes, 1687). Accompanied by this force, the lieutenant of the castillo in St. Augustine, Captain Francisco de Fuentes, sailed northward in December in charge of the presidio's galliot and two war piraguas on an expedition to make a strike against the Yamassee Indians who had again settled in the abandoned zone between Florida and Carolina (Marquez Cabrera, 1686; 1688a).(84) NOTE 84. Fuentes's second in command was Captain Francisco Romo de Uriza, who led one of the piraguas during the expedition (Cabrera, 1687). Governor Hita Salazar (1692) later certified that Romo de Uriza fought "in the encounters that were offered with the rebellious Indians of the said settlement [of Sancta Helena]." The governor himself remained as the lieutenant of the castillo while Fuentes was away from his post (Mafrquez Cabrera, 1686, 1688). Fuentes certainly made another assault against Santa Elena, newly resettled by the Yamassee, during which the Indian leader Niquisaya and his son and nephew were killed (Royal cedula, 1688). During his return, several further attacks seem to have occurred, including a raid near the mouth of the Savannah River. The following spring, William Dunlop journeyed south from Carolina into the abandoned lands south of Stuart's Town on a reconnaissance mission, and viewed a bluff on the south bank of the Savannah River near another bluff called Lower Amaira (probably the Yamacraw bluff of the early 18th century) where his Indian informants said "the Spaniard had in their Last returning from port Royall killed & taken away 22 Yamassie women" (Dunlop, 1687). Farther to the south, on Sapelo Island, Dunlop passed by very large plantations where we see the ruins of houses burned by the Spaniards themselves We see the Vestiges of a ffort; many great Orange Trees cut down by the Spaniards in septr last There was great plenty of ffigs peaches; Artechocks onions etc. growing in the preists garden his house had been of Brick & his small chappell, but all had been burned to Ashes last harvest by themselves; we see the remains & rags of old clothes wch some of our people know to have belonged to the Inhabitants of port Royall (Dunlop, 1687). Based on the reference to the "remains" and clothes of the inhabitants of Port Royal (known by the Spaniards as Santa Elena) discovered by Dunlop at what may be presumed to be the former site of the Sapala mission, these were almost certainly Yamassee Indians who had once lived in the Santa Elena/Port Royal area, but who had resettled the abandoned town of Sapala as early as 1685 (see Overview). Since there is not even a single reference to raids on Yamassee towns during the August-September Leon raid the previous year (as was implied by Dunlop's Yamassee informants), the destruction of the Yamassee settlement on Sapelo Island was probably carried out during Francisco de Fuentes's expedition later that winter.(85) NOTE 85. The fact that the mud-plastered friar's house and chapel had been recently burned in 1687 suggests that Mission San Joseph Sapala was not burned in the pirate raids of 1684, and remained standing until it was occupied by Yamassee Indiansin 1685. Both of these attacks-one near Yamacraw bluff on the Savannah River and one on Sapelo Island seem to have comprised part of Fuentes' effort to rid the coast of English-allied Yamassee Indians. AN480 It is also probable that St. Catherines Island, also settled by the Yamassee in 1685, was struck as well during Fuentes's return. In his letter of October 1686, Governor Marquez Cabrera indicated plans to "depopulate the said Island of Santa Elena and Santa Catalina, and the island of the Yamazes" (Marquez Cabrera, 1686), presumably referring to modern Parris [Santa Elena] Island, its neighbor Hilton Head Island, as well as St. Catherines Island to the south. Although the majority of later references refer to Santa Elena as the primary target (Marquez Cabrera, 1687; Rocha, 1687), during his residencia the governor himself related that the mission was sent to the vicinity of Santa Catalina, "having certain news that the Scottish and the greater part of the Yamaze Indians had returned to settle the said Island of Santa Catalina and its neighbor," presumably referring to Sapala (Marquez Cabrera, 1688a). That same year, the governor certified regarding the military service of Francisco de Fuentes that he was sent "to dislocate the English from the said Island of Santa Elena and the Yamaze Indians, their friends, who inhabited the [island] of Santa Catalina, which he executed, without having news that they have returned to it up to the cited day of August 8, 1688" (Marquez Cabrera, 1688b). Evidently, although the Yamassee had indeed settled on both Santa Catalina and Sapala Islands in 1685 following the final retreat of Guale and Mocama (Gomez, 1685; also see Overview), the Fuentes raid of 1686 resulted in the depopulation of these islands for at least the next two years. In a later letter to the governor of Carolina, Governor Marquez's successor recounted that the goals of the Fuentes expedition were different from those of the Leon expedition, and that more strict controls were imposed on the participants. The second voyage of one galliot and piraguas that my predecessor sent went only to the borders of this government in order to punish some Indians who were vassals of my King and Lord, having lacked in their obedience. They went to Santa Elena, an island of this presidio, and there [the Indians] gave resistance to the Spaniards, fighting with them… and an order was given to this galliot that it should not go as far as that jurisdiction and border [Carolina], only to that which pertains solely to this presidio in order to punish within its boundaries its own vassals who have denied obedience to my King and Lord and who have done damage in its lands, without passing to the contravention of the treaties (Quiroga y Losada, 1687). As related above, the Fuentes expedition was explicitly ordered to remain south of the legal bounds of Carolina, avoiding the type of controversy raised by Leon's plundering of Edisto Island that summer. This order, evidently followed to the letter by Captain Fuentes, may indeed have avoided direct retaliation by the Carolinans, who at the time considered the Spaniards to be "a cruell and inveterate Enemy" (Moore et al., 1686).(86) NOTE 86. The two governors (Quiroga y Losada and Colleton) who inherited the dispute between their predecessors (Marquez and Morton) effectively managed to avoid further escalation of hostilities, each denying responsibility for the earlier excesses of individuals under their government (see Bolton, 1925; Crane, 1956; and Bushnell, 1994). Colleton's predecessor Governor Morton was indeed on the verge of launching an assault against St. Augustine, apparently offering to add 300 men to pirate Captain Yankey's force of 200 (distributed on three vessels) for such an expedition (Torre, 1687). One major catalyst for this planned assault was the escaped slave Thomas de la Torre, who not only provided detailed information on the best route for such an attack, but also indicated a burning desire to personally strangle Governor Marquez Cabrera. As recounted by a former prisoner of the pirate Captain Yankey, the said governor of San Jore found out that they had burned his brother in the said galliot that was lost in that coast, and that likewise the said mulatto [Thomas de la Torre] had insisted to the said governor that he should dispatch vessels in order to take the post of St. Augustine, Florida, facilitating him greatly and promising him to place them within the place without being noticed, carrying them through a river that he said was to the leeward of it, leaving the ships at the mouth of the river, and entering with the piraguas that had to navegate three days upriver, and at the end of [the three days] leave the piraguas in the said river and march across land another three days until falling upon [amanecer] the port of St. Augustine, Florida, and that if they did not achieve the said enterprise, he [Torre] would pay him [Governor Morton] with his head, and that he had to grasp the governor [Mirquez Cabrera] and with his own hands he had to kill him, because he had held him fourteen years as a prisoner [?]being native to the island of Martinica, and he had his father in the same prison, and he was going to take him from it, all of which was public in the said port of San Jorje (Penate, 1688). A later correspondence from Governor Colleton to Governor Quiroga y Losada of Florida confirmed that this fugitive slave had made formal depositions to the English (Colleton, 1688). Despite such restrictions, the Fuentes expedition was judged to be an unequivocal success by the Spaniards, inasmuch as the Yamassee seem to have been effectively (if only temporarily in the long term) pushed back from Spanish territory. In his later defense during his residencia, Governor Marquez Cabrera described the expedition, noting that Fuentes was sent "to dislodge the said enemies from the Island of Santa Catalina and its neighbor, as they did, killing the cattle, burning the houses and milpas [cornfields]" (Marquez Cabrera, 1688a). A later account mentioned killing both "cattle and pigs" (Royal cedula, 1688). Not everything was destroyed, however, for upon the return of Fuentes' vessels in January of 1687, nearly 12,000 pounds of corn and 400 pounds of beans were delivered as spoils of the expedition to the landing at the mouth of the St. Johns River, suggesting that the Yamassee had been quite successful in their land settlements.(87) NOTE 87. An entry in the books of the Royal Contaduria dated May 9, 1687, related that 466 arrobas (25 pounds each) and 12 pounds of corn and 15 arrobas and 15 pounds of beans had been remitted by Adjutant Joseph Rodriguez from the embarcadero of San Pablo, at the mouth of the St. Johns River (Rocha, 1687). These provisions were described as "those that Captain Francisco de Fuentes brought in the galliot of His Majesty from the province of Santa Elena from the settlement of the Yamazes." At six reales per arroba of corn and eight per arroba of beans, the total spoils amounted to nearly 3000 reales, or some 365 pesos. Rice was even mentioned as spoils in one of the governor's letters, although this may have been looted from Stuart's Town (Royal cedula, 1688). Intriguingly, during the Fuentes raid 37 fugitive Christian Indians were brought back, "and some gentile [pagan] Yamases who wanted to come and settle" (Royal cedula, 1688). Very soon after the Fuentes raid a quantity of some 75 pounds of corn were given to "the Christian Indians that Captain Francisco de Fuentes brought from the provinces of Santa Elena, who went to settle at Tolomato," and later another 200 pounds were given to this same group of Indians brought back by Fuentes, described as "Christians settled in the village of Tolomato," for use as seed in planting their spring crops (Reyes, 1687). Some of this group may have been members of the group of Yamassees who fled northward from Guale and Mocama after the 1683 pirate raid, settling on Hilton Head Island before the establishment of Stuart's Town in late 1684 (see Overview). How long these new settlements remained in Tolomato after 1687 is unclear. In retrospect, the Spanish raids of 1686 effectively defined the extent of the vacant coastal buffer zone between Florida and Carolina, and ultimately set the stage for the Yamassee War of 1715. With the destruction of Stuart's Town by the Leon expedition, and the effective campaign against the coastal Yamassee towns by the Fuentes expedition, the early 18th-century social geography of lower Carolina was established. The Carolinans largely abandoned their rush to push settlement southward into debated lands, and the Yamassee settled en masse on the mainland north of the Savannah River mouth. This relationship was formalized in the early 1700s, but within a few short years the Yamassee would once again shift allegiances, rising up against the English and continuing their role as major players in the international struggle for the Georgia coast (Swanton, 1922; Crane, 1956).(88) NOTE 88. The Yamassee War of 1715 resulted in a flood of refugees to St. Augustine, once again significantly altering the demographic profile of Florida's remaining mission communities (Hann, 1989).
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